President:
Gita Morar
(519) 622-6990
First Vice-President:
Elvin Dass
(519) 972-9429
Secretary:
BRIEF SUBMITTED TO IMMIGRATION LEGISLATIVE REVIEWTreasurer.
Anil Jindal
(204) 255-0097
Vice President
organizations are affiliated to
NICC directly or to its chapters. One of the objectives
(Youth):
Amita Chandra
(613) 234-4238
Manitoba/
Saskatchewan:
Atlantic Provinces:
Pravin K. Varma
(506) 536-1636
continued below..............
weaknesses. To our great surprise, in the Report, there is no analysis of what is wrong with the current system; no analysis of how the proposals meet current deficiencies and no attempt to specify how these recommendations help meet Canada's needs. In fact the title "not just numbers" chosen for the Report seems to attempt to make a virtue of its disconnectedness to Canadian demographic and labour market needs.
Immigrants who come to Canada appreciate the fact that it is a privilege to come to Canada; one of the greatest countries with perhaps one of the most caring social programs structures in the world. One of Canada's prime objectives in pursuing immigration, even as this report sets out, is to benefit from the contribution to the prosperity of Canada that immigrants bring about. The recommendations,. that follow in the Report, however, totally ignore the benefits arising from the transfer of human capital that immigration confers on Canada and tend to look at the process of immigration as one which imposes costs without benefits. The authors state " We caution that our recommendations were often made in the light of limited research and data available". We wonder whether that alone fully accounts for the lack of cohesion between objectives listed and recommendations prescribed.
This is not to say that all is not well with the Report. Many of the detailed,-recommendations are quite positive and some are listed at the end of this brief. Unfortunately, constraints of time do not permit us to excessively dwell on them in the oral presentation lest the improvements we want to see cannot be emphasized.
We would like to start with Chapter 6 which deals with the categories of immigrants who are chosen for their contribution to Canada. We must start from the recognition that "those persons who will contribute to Canada's prosperity and to the economic well-being of Canadians" are equally capable of contributing to the prosperity and economic well-being of competing countries like the U.S.A. and if we have to get these reservoirs of modern technology, we have to compete for them. For the best, the competition is fierce and we have no chance if we approach it from the perspective of the report which seems to be that we are dispensing favours and choosing among supplicants. The approach proposed may well have been appropriate for the world of 1970's; but as a prescription for dealing with the next century, the kindest expression I can find for the thought process it embodies is "petrified myopia. The authors seem to think that those who will help us most are lined up outside with begging bowls and we make the supplicants jump through the hoops. What we need is a stance which would signal " Come! We are building this great nation of the next millennium. Bring your brains with you and together we will challenge the world and conquer it!"
For the category of self-supporting applicants which includes skilled workers, the major change proposed, as we see it, is that we replace the current point system by a set of core standards with respect to education, language ability, and self-sufficiency, the last being a euphemism for lots of money up-front. [We are ignoring age and experience for the moment.] Excellence in any one area no longer would compensate for even marginal short falls in the other. Professional skills which are in short supply in Canada are no longer an advantage in obtaining immigration; in the system anything beyond a junior college level of education is of no value. Einstein would not have qualified if he did not meet standardized tests in English or French and come up with several thousand dollars. We understand that the Chairman of one of our top five banks would also have failed to qualify. Hon. Paul Martin in the 1998 budget puts priority on our labour market needs of the future; this Report suggests that Hon. Mme. Lucienne Robillard put no emphasis on our serious deficit in high skilled professionals when we choose immigrants. It should also be understood that Canada along with the U; S..A. has a tradition of dependence, on immigration to obtain the highly-skilled among the blue-collar workers since our educational system and tradition are heavily slanted towards white-collar training. A balanced labour force would require considerable immigration in the blue-collar area as well and too many who would help the Canadian economy would not meet the proposed core education requirement. Zero tolerance on each core category, in our judgement, reflects an insensitivity to Canada’s needs; we find it to be a major error; and a surprising one. We fail to understand why an applicant in the investor or entrepreneur category needs to meet core standards in language ability or education or, for that matter, age. R-51 which sets out age limits as core standards might be in violation of our own charter of rights, in spirits, if not in law. We have no taste for a rule which would keep most restauranters and speciality grocers from Canada's shores and deprive us of their potential to spice-up Canadian life.
We move to R-29 to 31 in Chapter 4. The proposal to permit revocation of the landed status at the end three or six years as well as what appears to be a time limit on the status at six years are pernicious and very insensitive to human costs they imply. In order to extend landed status after three years as well as granting of citizenship, the Report recommends that requirements must include some specified criteria; since the list is not exhaustive, we must ask what the unstated criteria are. Are children as well as home-maker spouses with no incomes to be required to file income tax returns in order to maintain their landed status? This certainly would create jobs in Revenue Canada! Since children cannot qualify for citizenship until they reach 18 and cannot be renewed as landed immigrants for more than six years, would they become stateless when they have been here six years? Would old parents be sent back to countries of origin because they cannot speak an official language after six years? Would refugees be sent back to face their persecutors in their country of origin because they failed a language test or failed to spell Saskatchewan? The active participation clause requiring at least two of employment, study, volunteer/community service and family care is likely to result in abusive denials of citizenship. The requirement that a student who has spent six years in education, or a new employee in a rapidly changing industry, for instance, must meet any of the other criteria is too onerous and too prone to abuse. We like to submit that most investor class immigrants would not meet the criteria since they are unlikely to be employed, students, or engaged in family care!
The idea of substituting language requirements by payment of a sum of money exposes the agenda of the Report as one of taxing the immigrant rather than one of trying to get the best. The immigrant does not have to learn the language, only pay for the training! This adds to a whole slew of other costs imposed on the immigrant and effectively will force family separation on skilled immigrants coming from poor countries. For a report which preaches the importance of family in Canadian society, forcing family separation on the poor among the immigrants violates' all tenets of basic human decency. Does the Canadian dream that we hold out start with extended periods of family separation?
In fact, the whole notion of cost-recovery reflects a mind-set which considers an immigrant to be of no value to Canadian society. If the authors of the Report believe that a self-supporting immigrant adds to Canada's prosperity and the well-being of Canadian citizens, why is it that they want to pile up cost after cost on such an immigrant? Why should not Canada pay part of the cost of an activity which it has designed for its own benefit? Whoever has heard of a company recruiting employees asking them to pay for the cost of their recruitment? As a country which is already facing serious brain drain in a world moving inexorably into a cereberal economy, this approach flushes our best prospects of brain gain down the cost-recovery drain.
The Report advocates the abolition of the Immigration &: Refugee Boards and their replacement by a body of civil servants. While the IRB experience suggests need for improvement, we find the recommendation of going back to a bureaucratic system which has been totally discredited by past experience incredibly retrogressive. Where individual rights of appeal are concerned, replacement of open processes by closed ones and independent appeal bodies by branches of the same bureaucracy is unbecoming of a democratic society. In fact, we would like to have all appeal processes in immigration go to independent review boards composed of people chosen from the public at large.
Given the shortage of time,. we like to indicate some of the proposed changes which we are pleased to endorse.
For the purpose of ensuring consistent decision making, the Acts should require the department and the protection agency to develop comprehensive plain-language User-Guides to the Acts and Regulations. Instructions given through the User-Guides would be binding. The User-Guide would serve as the primary source of information for applicants. (R-8)
The Act should provided that spouses and dependent children for whom a sponsorship undertaking has been approved be permitted to apply for landing within Canada. (R-44)
The Act should exempt sponsored spouses and dependent children from the excessive-cost component of the medical inadmissibility provisions. (R-45)
Skilled workers with qualifications or experience in -regulated trades or professrions especially those which has a mandatory requirement for licensing to practise in Canada should ... receive counselling and information regarding the obstacles they will face in working in their professions or trade in Canada. (R-56). But this should be done by means other than by calling them for an interview which will add unnecessary costs and create undue difficulties.
The ... legislation should exempt companies operating in Canada with 20 or more employees from the requirement to obtain validation ... to sponsor a foreign worker.... (R-65).
The ... legislation should allow family members of foreign workers to work in Canada. (R-70)
The... legislation should allow foreign workers to make applications from within Canada for change of status to landed immigrants. (R-73). R-81 makes similar recommendations for foreign students. In both of these above recommendations, the phrase " permanent jobs" should be elaborated. After all, in these days of down-sizing, the notion of a permanent job needs careful definition.
The Protection Act should enable Canada to exercise leadership in generating international protection-oriented responses to refugee crises. (R-82)
The Protection Act should provide for the creation of an advisory committee composed of experts to advise the Protection Agency. (R-86)
The Protection agency should give priority to the most vulnerable and the most in need. There should be no requirement that the applicants be likely to establish themselves successfully in Canada. (R-88)
The Protection Act should allow, for persons abroad who are determined to be in urgent need for protection, to be issued temporary status. (R-93)
The Protection Act should exempt... persons granted protection ... and their dependents from the excessive cost component of the medical inadmissibility provisions ... (R-116)
In conclusion, notwithstanding the above desirable changes contained in the set of recommendations, we have great deal of difficulty agreeing with the overall thrust of the report. The report does not seem to relate immigration to Canada' s emerging needs. This Report is rooted in the frustrations of the immigration bureaucracy; not the needs of Canada. An immigration law designed to meet the frustrations of those who administer it is comparable to a criminal law which is designed primarily to make the life of the police easy. The reason why power corrupts is that those who exercise it too often fail to see the plight of the powerless. What we find most painful about the report is that in the 168 pages and the 172 recommendations, there is very little understanding of the human being at the other end of the immigration experience. To a potential immigrant, much of what is in this document is soul dead through and through. For a country the well-being of which in the next century is inextricably linked to its ability to attract the best immigrants, the policies recommended in this Report does not even begin to address its problems.