Kenney’s immigration backlog solution

As early as this late July, disquiet has been looming over Canada Immigration’s plan to slam the door to immigrants planning to make Canada their new home. The federal government, capitalizing on its newly-earned majority in Parliament, had just published the names and mug shots of suspected war criminals living in Canada.

Immigration Minister Jason Kenney appeared before a House of Commons
 committee on   Oct. 20, 2011 to discuss immigration backlogs. Photo courtesy
 of  Adrian Wyld/Canadian Press. Click image to view "Immigration Minister
Jason Kenney talks to stakeholders and the public about 2011 immigration
 policy," http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aKuRRYr88a4 

Jason Kenney, Canada’s minister for citizenship and immigration and popularly dubbed by the media as the “Immigration Hunter,” asked Canadians to help the government round up and deport suspected war criminals and illegal immigrants. Kenney also announced that the government would strip 1,800 people of their Canadian citizenship, which he said was obtained fraudulently.

On October 20, Jason Kenney rose before the Parliament’s Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration and delivered the ominous message that immigration applications need to be reduced in order to fix the current backlog.

After smugly boasting that the backlog issue reflects Canada being the number one choice destination of immigrants in the world—a land of opportunity, prosperity and democracy, Kenney then turns the problem of backlogs around as a simple mathematical problem. “When total applications exceed total admissions, you get a backlog,” he says.

To address the backlog problem, Kenney suggests that immigration levels be reduced. He stressed that annual applications must be cut down so that processing will not be slowed down as new applications are added to the pile of applications received in the previous years.

Kenney’s understanding of the immigration backlog problem appears irrational, if not fallacious. First, if Canada is indeed the number one choice for immigration in the world, then whatever number and mix Canada Immigration would establish every year—and no matter how high—would always fall short of the total population willing to come to Canada. Thus, there will always be a backlog. The backlog issue is never a function of the number of applications accepted or the government is willing to entertain, but the number of applications actually processed and approved.

Second, the best way to confront the backlog problem is to use a real timeline, which means starting from the time an actual application is accepted and processed in a visa office, which is a long way before an application can be successful. This means excluding whatever targets are established every year, because you cannot effectively measure operational efficiency against the whole population of would-be applicants, who on paper may all be accepted or denied.

So much time is spent from the day an application is actually received and reviewed. Information has to be verified and cross-referenced with Canadian labour requirements and needs or immigration policy targets and priorities before applicants appear for their personal interviews. One wonders why it takes so much time when we have at our disposal all the advances in technology and in medical and criminal surveillance.

And lastly, backlogs could be considered an inherent and perhaps, a necessary control valve to assure that we get the best we are looking for. People who apply to come to Canada as immigrants are its future citizens and Canada Immigration has the obligation to sort and screen from a mountain of applications only those who seem to be the best fit. In other words, backlogs are not bad per se.

Backlogs become a serious problem only when they involve applications which are supposed to be processed with haste and urgency due to shortage of skilled labour or when a matter of legal right has already been established. Much-needed temporary foreign workers and highly skilled immigrants fall under this category, and when their applications are bogged down in bureaucracy and red tape, backlogs become upsetting and distressful.

Sponsorship of family members such as spouses, children and parents is also a critical part of this category of immigrants. These are family members who have earned the right to come to Canada to live with their primary sponsors, especially those who have become citizens and contributed to the Canadian economy.

Minister Jason Kenney is proposing to cap the number of applications for family reunifications. Reducing the number of parents who could qualify under family reunification is impossible to accomplish without tinkering with the original make-up of Canadians to be allowed as permanent residents. Will Canada Immigration disqualify applicants with older parents, such those over 50 and above, or discriminate against married applicants with children and living grandparents? What happens now to the objective of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act (IRPA) to see to it that families are reunited in Canada?

There is already a low income cut-off requirement for sponsorship of family members, which is periodically reviewed and adjusted to economic reality. One cannot sponsor his or her family members if this income requirement is not met. In addition, sponsors are required to make an undertaking to provide financial support to their families, particularly parents, for a period of 10 years so they cannot opt to get social assistance during this period.

A proposal to give priority to families who can pay $75,000 up front for medicare expenses is both discriminatory and contrary to the objective of family reunification under the IRPA. And why would the problem of backlogs in processing be aligned with the economic ability of applicants to put money up front, when in fact it has nothing to do with the right to family reunification?

Refugees and those who are in need of protection routinely wait years for Canadian immigration officials to process their applications to Canada. The slow pace of having their applications processed adds to the refugees’ hardship and struggle to survive in desperate and dangerous situations, especially for those waiting to be reunited with their families trapped in refugee camps or countries beset with civil strife and wanton violation of human rights.

Will Jason Kenney throw them out of the plane too, as he is apt to describe Canada’s immigration system, and say to hell with Canada’s international obligations and commitment to refugees?

“Backlogs are not a function of a scarcity of operational resources,” according to Kenney. Despite Canada Immigration’s much-ballyhooed new worldwide electronic platform, the promise of modernization and efficiency of its Global Case Management System remains to be seen.

If there is a real and pressing backlog that needs to be addressed by Canada Immigration, it is in these categories of applicants—skilled workers, temporary or permanent, family members, and refugees—that the resources of government should be invested in. Not just in operational efficiency, but in clarity, consistency and fairness of government policy.

Contrary to the Conservative Party’s boast during the last federal election that they are the party for immigrants, they are nowhere near it as immigration levels in Canada continue to decline. There is clear evidence that the Conservative government is embarking on a hidden agenda to restrict the country’s immigration levels. The world’s economic downturn is being used as an easy and lame excuse, as governments in Europe, especially England, the United States and Australia are all focusing on reducing their intake of immigrants as part of their austerity agenda.

The extreme measures undertaken by the Conservative government are helping reduce the number of immigrants coming to Canada. Latest statistics from Canada Immigration show a decline across the board. Visas for skilled workers are down by 28 per cent, family-sponsored relatives are down by 14 per cent, and refugees, down by 25 per cent.

Myer Siemiatycki, professor of politics and public administration at Ryerson University, says the evidence is showing a very sharp decline. “Has the government decided on the outset that they want fewer admissions? Is the tap being closed tighter?” he asks.

Canada Immigration Minister Jason Kenney has already admitted that he plans to cut family class immigrations. More draconian measures from the Conservative government can only be expected soon, and these would be devastating for immigrants.

Landless in our own land

Philippine President Noynoy Aquino recently signed two major land lease agreements with China and Japan. China would lease from the Philippines 1.2 million hectares of land for agricultural production, and Japanese corporations, one million hectares for bio-fuel production.

A rice farmer in Davao del Sur, Agriculturist Finesa Cosico cites a host of reasons
 for the drop  in output. Photo courtesy of  Karlos Manlupig/ bulatlat.com. Click image
to view "Agrofuels & Food Prices" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ACEi1RF7QsE

These lease agreements were signed before Congress approved a resolution by both houses to sit as a bicameral constituent assembly to amend the economic provisions of the 1987 Philippine Constitution, which specifically limit foreign investments to 40 per cent. Proponents of charter change have argued that this restrictive foreign equity requirement is a major stumbling block in attracting foreign investments in the Philippines.

President Aquino, however, insists that charter change is not a priority of his administration. Rightly so, because there is no actual need to amend the economic provisions of the Constitution to ease the flow of foreign investments in the country. The so-called restrictive economic provisions have already been watered down and weakened by one legislation after another, all of which favour the foreign investors.

Preferential rights to foreign investors

One of these laws that gives preferential rights to foreign investors is Republic Act No. 7652, The Investor’s Lease Act, which grants to foreign investors the privilege of leasing private lands for a period of fifty (50) years, which may be renewed for another twenty‐five (25) years. An effective lease of 75 years is almost like owning the land for a lifetime and foreign investors can do as much as anything with the land they lease.

Next to Indonesia, the Philippines is the most popular country for land-grabbing deals in the Asia-Pacific region. According to an Oxfam study, some 1.37 million hectares of agricultural land were leased during the presidency of Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. President Noynoy Aquino has already doubled this number with the recent lease agreements he signed with China and Japan.

Foreign ownership of agricultural lands in the Philippines is not exactly a new phenomenon. As early as the 1900s, large banana and pineapple plantations were operated by large American multinational companies. Foreign agribusiness firms have long expanded into production of palm oil, rubber and other similar industrial crops.

Over the past few years, there has been a big surge in the demand by foreign investors for agricultural land, not only in the Philippines, but also in many countries of Africa, Asia and South America as well. Large-scale foreign investments in land, typically in the range of thousands to hundreds of thousands of hectares, are being driven by demand for agro-fuel production, and more recently—outsourced food production, in the case of the oil-producing states in the Arabian Gulf and heavy populated countries like China and India.

The agricultural land investment deals brokered by former President Gloria Arroyo covered 1.37 million hectares for the production of agro-fuel stock, such as coconut, jathropa and oil palm for bio-diesel, and sugar, sweet sorghum, cassava, and molasses for bio-ethanol.

Foreigners outsourcing food and agro-fuel production

Foreign investors have been targeting vast tracts of agricultural land in developing countries like the Philippines to produce agro-fuels. The Philippines, for one, offers a huge comparative advantage due to low labour and land costs. Blending of traditional transport fuels such as gasoline with bio-diesel and bio-ethanol, particularly for countries dependent on oil imports, has driven up the demand for agro-fuel production, thus building up the race for the world’s farmlands.

Adding to the growing demand for land in developing countries is the perennial food crisis, which is now exacerbated by the world financial crisis as well. To avoid shortages, soaring food prices and export restrictions ushered in by the 2008 food crisis, countries like China, India and those in the oil-rich Arabian Gulf, are purchasing or leasing lands through sovereign wealth funds in order to outsource their own food production for their own populations.

But leasing our agricultural lands to foreign corporations for either agro-fuel production or their food supply has disastrous consequences on our country’s own food security and to Filipino farmers.

For Chinese and Japanese: ‘Eat rice as much as you can’

The Philippines is the world’s largest rice importer in 2010, yet it is also the 8th largest rice producer in the world. Rice production has been declining in the last two years and there is a strong probability that the Philippines will have to import rice again from other countries. It is a nasty cycle of under production and importation, but the government continues to open up its farmlands to foreign investors so they can satisfy their demand for agro-fuels or stock-up for future food shortages.

As usual, the government will conveniently blame climate change and the vulnerability of our agricultural sector to both drought and rainfall for the failure to meet rice production target for this year. One Philippine senator also blamed rice hoarders and smugglers for distorting rice inventories.

Solita Monsod, U.P. economics professor and former secretary of the National Economic and Development Authority, even wrote in her column in one of the daily newspapers that the Philippines would never achieve rice self-sufficiency, i.e., no imports, if Filipinos do not reduce their appetite for eating rice and replace it with other root crops. Why do the Japanese and Chinese eat as much rice they can and not worry about a rice shortage in the future? Even Filipinos in the diaspora still continue to eat rice despite the availability of pasta, bread or other foodstuff, or even when their palates have learned to adapt to the Western diet.

Problematic policies of the government with regard to agrarian reform and food security are at the core of the country’s failure to be rice self-sufficient. Conversion of farmlands for residential, commercial and other industrial purposes continue unabated. President Noynoy Aquino continues to implement the agricultural policies of his predecessor in leasing lands to foreign governments and corporations to meet their agro-fuel demands and production of high-value cash crops for export.

Land-grabbing leaves nothing for Filipino farmers

Leasing of Philippine agricultural lands to foreign governments and corporations is tantamount to an act of land grabbing and it leaves Filipino farmers nothing. Those who might happen to be living on these lands are not given the opportunity to even have a say on the appropriation of their lands.

"Massive production of biofuels is a crime against humanity because of its impact
on global  food prices," says UN Special Rapporteur for the Right to Food. Click
 on image to view "The Right to Food: Corporate, Foreign Government Land Grab
Causing Hunger  in Poor Countries:"
http://www.democracynow.org/2010/10/28/un_special_rapporteur_on_the_right

This is the recurring problem that besets leasing of lands to foreign investors at present. Farmers and smallholders are being ignored. The failure to engage these farmers before signing deals has already led to the collapse of two high profile “land grab” negotiations—between Korean firm Daewoo Logistics and Madagascar, and the Chinese and Philippine governments. The government of Madagascar fell as a result of a popular uprising against the Korean deal.

Did President Noynoy Aquino consult with the farmers and smallholders before he signed the land lease agreements with China and Japan?

“Land is not a commodity: you don’t just take it away from people and give them something else—it’s not exchangeable like that,” says a spokesperson for GRAIN, an international NGO campaigning against land grabbing.

“It has much deeper meaning for people…you don’t turn a farmer into a farm worker and say it’s the same thing,” the GRAIN spokesperson adds.

And with the current momentum towards charter change, giving foreigners virtual ownership of agricultural lands will give them full control of how to use these lands. Whether it’s for agro-fuel production or to ensure their own stock file of food, this will displace the country’s rice self-sufficiency aspiration and its program of genuine land reform for the small farmers.

Large-scale land investments endanger food security of host nations

According to the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the right to food, many large-scale land investments by foreign governments and corporations are not meeting the goal of ensuring equitable and sustainable food security. In fact, these foreign investments may be further jeopardizing the rights of host populations.

The UN Report recommends that the rights of communities affected by large-scale land investments must take centre stage. Their rights over resources must be respected and the development of policies to address their needs must be made a priority.

If the proponents of charter change are allowed to have their say, “Filipinos will be landless in their own land. Kawawa naman tayo,” writes Neal H. Cruz of the Philippine Daily Inquirer.