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Tories defend immigration changes
By Lucy-Claire Saunders
Deputy Minister Richard Fadden |
And yet, controversy continues to dog the contentious piece of legislation.
In an effort to quell public anxiety over the Conservatives’ proposed amendments to the immigration system, Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC) is doing all it can to trumpet the government’s good intentions.
At a press conference last Wednesday in Vancouver, Deputy Minister Richard Fadden urged the public to look at the facts before getting caught up in the politics. Simply put, there is a backlog of 925,000 visa applicants and if the government doesn’t act, there will be 1.5 million applicants waiting by 2012, said Fadden.
As a part of the new legislation, CIC will no longer be required to process all applications — except for protected refugees and those requesting asylum from within Canada on humanitarian and compassionate grounds.
Instead, CIC will place a priority on ‘desirable’ applicants. Minister of CIC, Diane Finley will have the authority to issue specific instructions requiring immigration officers to process certain types of applications only.
But the minister will not personally interfere with individual applications in “any shape or form,” said Fadden.
“The Minister is limited under the parliament plan, the Immigration Act, the Charter, and the Human Rights Act,” he added.
There would also be no number restrictions, or quotas, placed on Canadian embassy missions overseas, as “that would be discrimination,” he said.
But Vancouver-based immigration lawyer, Richard Kurland is skeptical of the minister’s approach to the backlog. Stripping prospective immigrants of rights currently enshrined in the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act (IRPA) is not the answer, he said.
“You get rid of the backlog by canceling invitations to the birthday party,” he said. “Not by denying immigrants the right to a visa.”
Under the IRPA, anyone who meets the preconditions for visa issuance has a right to a visa.
But under the new legislation, that right is taken away as anyone can be denied if they do not match Canadian immigration priorities as mandated at that time.
“You don’t have the right to come into Canada, but when you meet all the preconditions of visa issuance, you have the right to that visa,” explained Kurland.
Instead, Kurland thinks the government should cap immigration intake and post the priority professions on every Canadian embassy website.
“It’s important that the the immigration process is transparent and done in an accountable fashion instead of doing it in secret behind the wizard’s curtain,” he said. “Which way is the Canadian way?”
Immigration rights groups are outraged at the proposed changes. Cynthia Oka from No One is Illegal said: “Not only are these changes anti-democratic, they are anti-immigrant. These changes represent a profoundly dehumanizing and racist conception of immigrants as disposable commodities who are only worth their labour.”
When a reporter read Oka’s words out loud at the recent press conference, deputy minister Fadden appeared shocked at the term ‘dehumanizing.’
“I can’t think of anything more dehumanizing than having a family have to wait six years to even hear whether they will be able to move to Canada,” he said.
The new legislation will not apply to those in the backlog, only to those who have applied on or after February 27, 2008.
For those who have already applied, applicants with a priority profession are encouraged to re-apply again under the new system. They can withdraw their former application, get a refund and apply again, said Fadden.
The details of the immigration legislation are still unclear, and there are still questions swirling around the exact process for making an appeal if an applicant receives a rejection notice.
Fadden said that within a year, applicants will be told whether they have been accepted or not, at which time they have the right to ask the federal court for a review.
But Kurland said there are no grounds to appeal under the law because even if the applicant meets all of the qualifications but is not considered a priority candidate, he or she will simply have to apply again.
The bill will now go to a parliamentary committee which will study it minutely. After that, it will again go before the House for a vote. If approved by the House, the bill will go the Senate for its approval. If it is okayed there, it will become the law. The process could take as little time as three weeks.
— with files from IANS
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