By Lucy-Claire Saunders

Jazz Grewal is fed up. And he says it’s time for action. The owner of Indian restaurant, Desi Junction, is calling on all restaurateurs who are having trouble bringing qualified candidates from abroad to join him in his campaign to speed up the skilled worker visa application process.

“I want every restaurant owner, no matter what kind of food they serve, to tell Human Resources Development Canada (HRDC) that they need to produce better results,” he said.
This week Grewal, 31, will be meeting with a lawyer to draft a letter demanding that HRDC and Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC) ease restrictions on bringing chefs and servers from abroad and expedite their application process.

He has already spoken to several other restaurant owners who will also sign the letter.
Grewal, who recently expanded his Delta operation with a second location, Desi Downtown on Vancouver’s Denman Street, said he never had a problem in the past bringing skilled workers from India. But last July, Grewal applied for a Labour Market Opinion, a report on the likely impact that hiring a foreign worker would have on the Canadian market, with Ottawa’s HRDC office in Chandigarh. Eight months later, he still hasn’t heard back from them.

The UK is also facing a similar curry crisis. Its immigration policy favours East Europeans over South Asians, crippling the curry industry. Under current regulations, British employers must pay to bring over chefs, who are considered low-skilled workers. The tight restrictions send a message that the $6.8 billion industry is unappreciated and expendable.

Pradeep Dhankappan, who owns bistro Saravanaa Bhavan in Vancouver, says his new restaurant on Broadway was supposed to open in the fall but had to be pushed back to the end of January.

“You are talking about a huge, most unprofessional way of doing things for any business man,” he said. “There is no where in the world where restaurants can run this way.”
Saravanaa Bhavan is an international chain with 28 locations across the world, including three in Ontario. Dhankappan doesn’t understand why it must take so long for his chefs from India to be admitted into Canada when the government is already familiar with the franchise. Dhankappan says a human resource officer told him the problem is a backlog of Market Labour Opinion requests.

“I think this is very primitive,” Dhankappan said. “Either say, ‘yes’ or ‘no’ and move on with it.”

CIC’s website states that 63 per cent of applications submitted to the New Delhi location in 2007 were processed in 28 days or less. However, the website also states: “Past processing times may not indicate the length of time it will take to finalize applications in the future.”

Vancouver immigration lawyer, Richard Kurland, says this is exactly why so many applicants feel misled.

“What the website says is that people who received that service waited X number of days,” he said. “But that does not answer the question, ‘If I were to apply today, how long will it take to get my service? Our question is prospective. Their answer is historic. They’re driving forward using the rear-view mirror and they expect you to do the same.”

Kurland says if Canada is interested in market efficiency, it has to provide businesses with critical information.

“If [Grewal] knew how long it actually takes to get his chef here, he probably would have never applied,” Kurland said.

Because Grewal, can’t find a skilled chef, he has been working in the kitchen himself, racking up 18-hour days. Beads of sweat trickle down Grewal’s cheek as he throws a dash of coriander powder into a bubbling pot.

“I am supposed to work on marketing,” he said, as the sauce for his butter chicken thickens, releasing a rich and earthy aroma. “But how am I supposed to focus on the business side when I am busy in the kitchen?”

Almost 66 per cent of Canadian employers are having a hard time finding skilled and experienced workers, according to a Manpower study. The study, which surveyed 1,000 Canadian companies as well as thousands of businesses across the world, found that Canada, Mexico, and Japan suffer the greatest skilled labour shortages. As a result, employers must look elsewhere to fill job openings. But immigration times have skyrocketed more than 20 per cent since 2004, according to statistics released by the Liberal opposition party in Ottawa.

CIC spokesperson, Karen Shadd-Evelyn, insists that at least half of the temporary foreign worker applications are processed within 14 days or less.

While the government could stand to invest more money in it’s overseas HRDC offices, Grewal says an equally confounding and even larger problem is immigration consultant companies, which jam the system with an overload of applicants.

“I am really fed up with these guys,” he said. “They advertise to locals saying ‘Pay us $10,000 and we will help bring your relatives here as a cook.’”

Consulting agencies act as a third party, applying on behalf of employers or family members. It’s been estimated that there were up to 6,000 agencies operating in Canada before 2004 and untold numbers abroad. Since then, the consultants have been regulated. Currently, the Canadian Society of Immigration Consultants (CSIC), a quasi-governmental agency that monitors the immigration industry, has just over 1,000 registered businesses.

Consultants are generally free to charge what they like and because they don’t have to pay a fee for the Labour Market Opinion, they can flood the system without consequence, according to Kurland. He says the solution seems fairly simple - the computer system at HRDC should be able to identify how many applications are being sent by each immigration consulting agency. When something looks fishy, a red flag should be raised.

“It’s not rocket science,” he said.

Private immigration consultancy agency Canada-U.S.A. Immigration operates in Vancouver and helps those looking to work in or move to Canada and the U.S. by filling out the necessary paper work and preparing the prospective employee for the interview.

Consultant Ravi Sher says employers asking for help finding skilled labour generate most of his business. “Right now we get a lot of requests for Chinese and Indian chefs,” he said.

To find these much sought after employees, Sher says the consulting agency will target cities overseas where there are a high number of restaurants, and advertise in local newspapers.

Sher says his consulting agency has not experienced the kind of delay that Grewal, or Dhankappan, are experiencing.

While Sher was sympathetic towards employers who have to wait longer than normal, he said businesses like Canada-U.S. Immigration are not to blame.

“We cannot function without employers hiring us to help them find workers,” he said. “We are doing them a service.”

Until Grewal’s Labour Market Opinion application is processed, he will be in the kitchen picking up the slack. Eventually, he hopes to open a third location but says he won’t be able to if the government doesn’t hurry up and provide access to qualified employees.

Meanwhile, Dhankappan doesn’t have hope that things will change any time soon.
“It’s a question of putting the right resources in the right places,” he said. “[The government] is very well aware of the problem but they’re just not doing anything about it. Period.”