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http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/Canada/2005 ... 46-cp.html


OTTAWA (CP) - The Liberal government wants to streamline the citizenship application process and make it easier for immigrants to reunite their families by bringing parents and grandparents to Canada.

Sources say Immigration Minister Joe Volpe is also set to loosen rules on foreign college and university students, to make it easier for them to work while they're in Canada.

The moves are expected to be announced Monday by Volpe at a pair of news conferences in Toronto and Montreal.

The aim of the citizenship changes is to reduce the current backlog of cases that can see applicants wait up to two years for a decision. The government wants to cut the waiting time to a maximum of 12 months.

On family reunification, the goal is to triple the number of applications processed in a year, from the current 6,000 to about 18,000. The aim there is to reduce a massive list of about 100,000 cases currently on file.

The rules on foreign students currently restrict them to on-campus jobs while they attend school in Canada. Those regulations will be relaxed to let them work off-campus.

They will also be allowed to stay in the country and work for up to two years after graduation - rather than the current one year - if they take jobs outside the three major urban centres of Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver.


Federal officials say colleges and universities have been lobbying for the changes, in the hope that they will help attract more students from outside the country.

Volpe's initiatives come as the Liberals mount a concerted public relations effort to take the minds of voters off the sponsorship scandal that has shaken Prime Minister Paul Martin's minority government.

Martin made a high-profile visit to Vancouver last Friday to sign a deal that will allow the city to share federal gasoline tax revenue - a major Liberal promise from the last election.

The prime minister also tried to project a business-as-usual image Sunday, announcing a May 24 byelection date to fill a vacant Commons seat in Newfoundland.

That could be overtaken by a general election if the opposition makes good on threats to bring down Martin's government over the sponsorship affair.

But Liberal strategists insist Volpe's immigration reforms shouldn't be seen as an effort to buy votes in the event of a national campaign later this spring.

They say the minister has been working on the changes ever since he took over the portfolio in January - replacing Judy Sgro, who stepped down in the midst of controversy over her handling of the job.

Volpe is taking action because he wants to improve the system, not just to curry electoral favour in ethnic communities, said one cabinet aide.

That view was seconded by Jim Karygiannis, a Toronto-area Liberal MP who said he's been lobbying Volpe for months to streamline the citizenship and family reunification systems.

"I'm ecstatic," Karygiannis said Sunday. "People can say it's opportunistic, but it's the right thing for the people of Canada, it's the right thing for the families of Canada."

The move to speed up the citizenship process will require additional expenditures to beef up personnel. The money will go not just to the Immigration Department, but also to the RCMP and CSIS to improve their handling of security screening - a prerequisite before citizenship can be granted.

Volpe is also expected to reiterate his commitment Monday to another initiative that grew out of the federal budget delivered in February.

That will see additional money and personnel deployed to fast-track the admission of about 110,000 immigrant wage earners with badly needed skills.

"We have to turn ourselves from a risk-management system into a recruitment system," Volpe told a newspaper on the weekend. "We have to rethink how we do business and attract people."

interesting....

Hmm, that'd be good news for me. My fiancée (and common-law wife according to Canadian law) is currently one of those 100 000 cases in the backlog of permanent residence requests in the case of family reunification.

We're waiting for that to be approved to move back to Canada.

The sooner the better.

- CamCKA

if i stay with my current sweetie it might be a possibility....

I think it’s great that we are bringing in older people from other countries to take advantage of our health care system. I mean, we don’t really have any issues with even more people at our emergency rooms. Especially people who have never paid Canadian taxes, or contributed to Canada. I’m sure everybody will be grateful as they wait an extra few hours in emergency.

Makes perfect sense.

Another good idea is to allow immigrants who are 55 years and over to get citizenship without having to take the very basic general knowledge test about Canadian society, culture etc.

Why would they need to know this stuff when they live here?

All great moves by our desperate vote grabbing Liberals.

I hope the immigrant communities can see these moves for what they really are.

I see your point, Brock.

I like the Univeristy-work clause, but I'd rather they move it more towards helping people that *did* graduate here and *want* to work here get work visas/move to citizenship. Like my poor, able and qualified Icelandic friend that got deported because he couldn't find a company that would go through the red tape of getting a visa *for him*.

btr to die fighting then to go out like a coward dont u think

It’s a pity that Liberal “fighting” means more pressure on our healthcare system exerted by people who have never contributed to the Nation and who will never even have to learn anything about Canada to get their citizenship.

That’s the way the Liberals fight. Remember that on voting day.

Never contributed to the Nation?

Actually Eyebrock, just FYI, they are talking about making it easier to WORK in Canada. People who work, even if they are foreigners, pay taxes just like everyone else, and therefore they contribute just as mush as you or I in a given year to the healthcare system.

Plus, the biggest change they are making is to reduce the backlog of the family sponsorship cases, where a Canadian sponsors a family member to become a permanent resident, or citizen. I happen to be currently involved in sponsoring a family member as stated above. It may interest you to know that in family sponsorship cases, the sponsoring family member agrees to pay for all of the basic needs of the person should they not be able to pay for them on their own (food, lodging, and in our case ALBERTA HEALTH CARE PREMIUMS, employment insurance etc.) for a period of 10 years after the application is approved. So actually, it's ME who is taking the risk of the person being an out-of-work financial drain, NOT the Canadian government. I have no problem with this, by the way, and find it totally logical.

Just wanted to clear that up.

- CamCKA

Cam, I'm sure you'll pay your whack. Unfortunately in Ontario alone we have 16,000 sponsors who have reneged on the deal and the Feds don't follow up on getting the cash back. In Australia family class imigrant sponsors are required to purchase bonds for health care, a good idea I believe.

I'm an immigrant and I faced all that Canada Immigration threw at me. I worked the crappy jobs when I first got here and I was told that if I claimed welfare within 10 years I would have to pay it back with interest. I got a a low paying job to start with. It's a pity that these 16,000 sponsors and their families on the welfare rolls of Ontario are not made accountable. Making life easier for this kind of exploitation is what pisses me off. It also pisses me off that anybody can become a citizen without really knowing much about Canada.
Encouraging elderly family class immigrants who have never paid taxes and who are unlikely to ever get jobs here does nobody any good except the liberal candidates in their ridings. Cam, look at the facts, not everybody wants to contribute to our society, some just want to screw it.

Fair enough, I agree with most of that. Except that what it means isn't that the standards for immigration are too easy, it's that the standards for enforcing the promises made by the family class sponsors aren't good enough.

In my opinion, the only natural resource lacking in Canada is people, so increased immigration is probably a good thing.

Having said that, I totally agree that the system should ensure that immigrants have a better knowledge of Canada before being granted citizenship. But I currently live in France, and I'll tell you, their system is 50 times worse than ours from a societal integration standpoint.
In my experience, most immigrants to Canada adapt relatively well into the society, even if there will always be some exceptions. And at the VERY least, second generation "immigrants" are pretty much always perfectly integrated.

Whereas in France, you have millions of immigrants from North African countries who have pretty much been left totally out to dry by the whole governmental and societal structure here. The result - they all live together in communities that are totally separate from the french society, it's not unusual to find cases where even 2nd generation kids have trouble with the language, they can't get any good jobs...

At least in Canada, I'm pretty sure you have speak one of the 2 official languages to immigrate (or you are required to take classes), and there is a Canadian knowledge exam (even if it's insufficient). That's still better than a lot of other countries.

Canada has tons of natural resources, tons of technical, scientific and social expertise, very good quality education, a relatively attractive business atmosphere.... all the necessary conditions for an economy to absolutely take off. We're just missing the people to drive it all. And we need all kinds, not just doctors and engineers. We need labourers, plumbers, construction workers, etc.

And encouraging elderly family class immigrants who have never paid taxes DOES do some people some good. It encourages their younger, productive, working sponsors to stay in Canada and continue to be productive, rather than getting a good education and/or experience in Canada and then hauling their productive butts back to their home country to be with mom and pop. I'm not saying it's a financially viable strategy, just that it isn't ALL bad.

Anyway, it's bascially just the rosy and ugly sides of a coin that we're looking at here. One doesn't exist without the other. From an economical standpoint, what would be interesting would be to see stats on whether 1st generation immigrants overall produce more than they cost or vice versa in a given year.

- CamCKA

Ok Cam, couple of points.

I agree France is a tad screwed up on its immigration. But hey, France is screwed up on a lot of fronts. Their problems with North African immigrants are a legacy of their empire. But that’s another thread!

I’m really not as sure as you that we NEED unfettered immigration. Some people believe we need immigrants so that we have a tax base that will support the aging population. If that is the case family class immigration only adds to the drain on already limited health care and exacerbates the social infrastructure problems we (at least in Ontario) already have.
Don’t kid your self about integration in Canada. We are showing signs of wear on this. There are plenty of immigrants who have been here 30 years and more who can’t speak English or French. Knowledge of the official languages is not a requirement for new immigrants. It is not even a requirement to take your Ontario drivers license.

I’m all for family re-unification and I agree that it probably would make for a happy and productive family. I just think those people bringing over elderly relatives should have to pay for the health care costs incurred by these relatives who have never paid any Canadian taxes. Obviously most sponsoring families will be tax payers, but hey, I pay taxes too. As I waited 12 hours at emergency the one and only time I have ever used OHIP in ten years of happy tax paying, I do begrudge people using the system who have never contributed. You may pay tax but your elderly relatives haven’t and never will. We have a finite amount of cash available for health care. It already isn’t enough. This scheme needs to be balanced with the sponsors being required to pay or contribute a greater amount for the services they use that Canadian taxpayers have funded.

In summation, bring your granny over, but pay the health care costs for her or buy insurance then you get my vote.

Interesting points, and certainly nothing incorrect about any of them.

Of course, increasing immigration will result in some abuses of our social systems, just like it will result in additional productive tax payers.

I'm just not ready to assume that the net effect is economically negative without seeing some data to back it up. Of course, I don't have any data to the contrary, either...

I guess I assumed that knowledge of the language was a requirement because my fiancée had tried to go the route of a Qualified Worker application before we chose the family sponsorship class, and language is a big requirement in that one. She would have easily qualified for it but the administrative delay in treating the file is something like 3 years in the Paris embassy, whereas family sponsorship takes about 6 months.

What I am all for, is reducing the administrative lead time on processing the files, regardless of which type of application it is. You're right that lightening the requirements isn't the answer. The thing is, the article isn't very clear about what action they are planning to take to reduce the backlog. Are they planning to put additional resources into processing the files, or to lighten up the requirements to a point where they can just stamp them all "approved"? Of course, I'm against that!

- CamCKA

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