Advice for the New Immigration Minister
This week's column is addressed to the new Conservative Minister of Citizenship and Immigration. It is meant to give him or her (at press time the Cabinet had not been announced) a few tips on how to improve our immigration system quickly and relatively easily.
Dear Minister:
Congratulations on your new position. You have a big job ahead of you and one that has proven to be a bigger challenge than many of your predecessors could handle. To help you get started, I have taken the liberty of providing you with some unsolicited advice. So here it goes:
1. Open up the decision-making process.
Currently, Canadian divides up the immigration pie through a secretive bureaucratic process that does not allow for democratic input or debate. As noted immigration lawyer and policy expert (and my good friend) Richard Kurland has tirelessly pointed out, each year the bureaucrats in the federal immigration department decide how many immigrant visas will be processed by each visa office. They also determine what portion of a visa office's target -- in effect, its quota -- will be allotted to the economic classes (skilled workers and business immigrants) and what portion will be devoted to spouses, parents and grandparents.
These decisions have huge consequences and directly affect the lives of thousands of Canadians and permanent residents as well as future immigrants themselves. If people are wondering why it is now taking several more years than before to sponsor your parents, this is why. Ottawa decided a while back to tilt the quota system in favour of economic class immigrants, with good reason in my view. But it did this without engaging in any real public debate or consultation. Why not give the responsibility for making these hard choices to the people we elect to make hard choices, our members of Parliament? The Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration is a perfect forum to have these issues debated with full public input. That way, in the future, when sponsors are wondering why the Canadian visa office in Hong Kong or Beijing is telling them they cannot process their parents' or grandparents' visa this year because they have already met their annual "target", they can know where to go to vent their displeasure.
2. Properly staff your visa offices or limit intake of applications.
This issue is very much related to the first one. Right now, there is nothing in place to stop thousands more applicants from applying for immigration each year than can be processed within a reasonable period. This has resulted in lengthy backlogs and enormous waiting times for prospective immigrants. To attract the proverbial "best and brightest" we need a system that can respond to applicants within a reasonable time. If the resources to add staff to overseas offices cannot be obtained - and there is no indication that a Conservative Cabinet will be any more generous than the Liberal one was -- then let's limit the number of applications those offices accept each year so they are in proportion to how the offices are staffed. Otherwise, we are only giving out false hope by encouraging people to put their lives on hold unnecessarily.
3. Support and encourage the growth of Provincial Nominee Programs (PNPs).
I may be biased here because of my past work experience (I used to manage the BC PNP), by I truly believe - and I am not the only one - that the provinces are better placed than Ottawa to select the skilled workers and business immigrants our economy needs. The provinces are better connected to the growing businesses in their jurisdiction and better able to determine how to address their skill shortages. They can also engage in a dialogue with local governments to determine the kind of investment and entrepreneurship they should be attracting from overseas. To expand the provincial role, Ottawa really only needs to get out of the way and start to view the provinces as equal partners in the immigrant selection process.
So there, Mister or Madam Minister, are a few things to get started with. Tackling just these three things will bring about a much more accountable, effective and responsive immigrant selection system. No doubt your bureaucracy will have a whole host of other things they will try to focus your attention on. But don't lose sight of the bigger picture. After all, you have been elected to make the hard choices!
Immigration Mailbox II
As I mentioned in my inaugural column a fortnight ago, immigration has been discussed a fair bit in the federal election campaign now coming to a conclusion. With election day less than a week away, I thought I would take a closer look at some of the positions taken by the three major federal political parties on this issue.
Each of the election platforms of the Liberal, Conservative and New Democratic Parties addresses the issue of immigration in specific terms and, sometimes, with fairly detailed policy proposals.
The Liberals have the most detailed plan to reform the system. However, given that they have been in power for the last 12 years, one has to wonder why all their ideas for improving the system are coming right at the end of their most recent mandate. Their plan to gradually abolish the Right of Landing Fee over the next two budgets seems especially suspicious in its timing. The Liberals introduced this fee in 1995 as part of then-Finance Minister Paul Martin’s measures to balance the federal budget. While the budget has been running surpluses for many years now, the Liberals have only in the last few weeks come to the conclusion “[t]he time has come to remove this barrier.”
Having said that, the Liberals deserve some credit for spelling out in detail their plans for other aspects of the immigration system. Their proposals for assisting new skilled immigrants in overcoming labour market barriers and obtaining recognition of their international credentials – an issue that the Conservatives and NDP also address in their platforms but in rather perfunctory fashion – reflect the experience they have gained in government struggling with this important and multifaceted problem.
The Liberals also pledge more money for settlement programs ($1.3 billion over the next five years), an additional $700 million to reduce backlogs in visa offices overseas, and the creation of an “In-Canada Landing Class” to help spread the benefits of immigration beyond Canada’s three major cities.
Each of these ideas has merit. However, once again, some skepticism is warranted given the fact each of these initiatives requires significant new funding and that the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration during the last dozen years of Liberal rule has rarely been successful in securing more money for his/her department from Cabinet colleagues.
The Conservatives’ approach to the immigration issue is more heavily weighed on the enforcement side of things. For example, they focus on speeding up and increasing the number of deportations especially for those immigrants or illegals convicted of serious crimes. They also pledge to amend the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act to allow judges to order deportations as part of criminal sentences (currently deportation can only be accomplished by immigration officials and tribunals).
The Conservatives also want to give guns to the officers than man our border points and implement “face recognition and other biometric technology” at ports of entry.
On the facilitative side, a Conservative government would also cut the Right of Landing Fee and establish a “Canadian Agency for Assessment and Recognition of Credentials.” On the last point, it should be kept in mind that credential recognition and the regulation of professions such as engineering, medicine and the construction trades has traditionally been a provincial responsibility. A “made in Ottawa” or national solution may be challenging to implement.
The NDP takes a very “pro-immigrant” stance in its platform, pledging more money for the system, an increase in immigration levels, and the relaxation of certain rules for admission. They also promise to abolish the landing fee and assist in credentials recognition for skilled immigrants. Their most specific proposals involve allowing permanent residents and citizens to sponsor one additional relative, apparently regardless of relationship, over the course of a lifetime and allowing people without status in Canada to apply for landing based on humanitarian and compassionate grounds.
The NDP platform on immigration otherwise lacks specifics and often relies on generalities. This may reflect the fact that they have little experience governing on this issue.
So, as election day approaches, these are the choices that are before us with respect to the issue of immigration. At the very least, one would hope that whomever is elected will follow through on the pledges they have made to improve a system that is currently far from perfection.
Immigration Mailbox I
Welcome to the inaugural Immigration Mailbox column. In this space, we hope to address issues and answer questions related to the issue of immigration. We welcome readers to submit their questions on the Canadian immigration system. In later columns, I will attempt to answer the questions that have been submitted.
First, a little bit about my background: I have been an immigration consultant for over a decade. Previously, I have served as the National Vice-President of the Association of Immigration Counsel of Canada (AICC) and I am a registered member of the Canadian Society of Immigration Consultants (CSIC). Most recently, I worked with the BC government where I managed the BC Provincial Nominee Program and held the position of Director of Economic Immigration Programs.
With a federal election quickly approaching, immigration is once again an issue that is in the news. This past fall, the Federal Liberals re-committed to increasing the annual number of immigrants to 300,000 by gradually increasing the annual total (now at 245,000) over the next 5 years. The Federal Immigration Minister, Joe Volpe, also made news by committing to increasing the number of sponsored parents and grandparents approved this year and by stating that the immigration selection system should do a better job of addressing the skill shortages that exist in the Canadian labour market. All federal parties, and many of the provinces, have expressed ideas on how to better utilize the skills that economic immigrants bring to the country to ensure that the doctors, accountants, engineers and other skilled individuals that are selected to immigrate here are not prevented from making the most of their skills and experience after they arrive.
Canada is a country founded by immigrants and we now accept more immigrants per capita than any other country in the world. Although our system is not without its flaws, it is important to keep in mind the things our country does right in this area. Virtually all advanced industrialized countries are entering an era where they are competing globally for skills and knowledge. Alongside this trend toward globalization, Canada and many other Western countries are facing demographic pressures that require we look beyond our borders to address shortages of highly skilled workers. Among these countries, perhaps none is better placed to benefit from its vast experience in selecting and settling large numbers of immigrants than Canada.
However, it is also important to keep in mind that those benefits are unlikely to be realized unless our immigrant selection system and settlement services are not properly modernized and enhanced. As someone who has had recent experience working within the immigration division of a provincial government, I can attest to the important role that the provinces must play in selecting skilled and business immigrants if these classes are to bring continuing economic benefits to the province and the country. Canada is simply too large and diverse a country to have one national selection system that can meet the needs of all regions. The provinces are much better placed to select the types of skills and experience needed by their local economies. This means that the Provincial Nominee Programs (PNPs) that have developed across the country will need to grow and expand and that the federal government will in the future have to view the provinces as full partners in the realm of economic immigrant selection.
And once immigrants are here, it is the role of regulatory bodies, which are mostly provincial rather than federal, and Canadian employers to recognize the skills that these individuals bring and provide the opportunities that will allow their skills to be fully utilized. Currently, the Canadian labour market is far too closed to workers whose experience and skills have come from other countries. By contrast, the United States does a much better job of maximizing the economic potential of internationally-trained individuals.
These are some of the larger issues that the federal and provincial governments are currently struggling with and none of them have easy answers. However, I hope that some of your questions can be answered in this space in the near future. I look forward to receiving your inquiries and opinions.
Joe Kenney can be e-mailed at jkenney@www.jkenneyconsulting.com
