When a reply isn't a reply at all

Dear Carey Toane,

I am replying to your e-mail of February 23, 2008, addressed to the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration, concerning open work permits for spouses of Canadian Citizens.

As you know, an applicant in the Spouse or Common-law Partner in Canada Class is not eligible to apply for a work permit until he or she has received notification that his or her application has been approved in principle. This restriction is supported by the Immigration and Refugee
Protection Act and Regulations (IRPA).

Pursuant to sub-section 207 of IRPA, a work permit may be issued to a foreign national in Canada who is a member of the Spouse or Common-law Partner in-Canada Class. Given that it is permissible to issue a work permit only to a member of this class, Section 124 of the Regulations state which foreign nationals may be considered to be a member of this
class. This regulation states that a member: must be a spouse or common-law partner of a sponsor and cohabit will that sponsor in Canada, must have temporary resident status in Canada and, must be the subject of a sponsorship application.

In order to determine whether or not an applicant is a member of the Spouse or Common-law Partner in-Canada Class, officials at the Case Processing Centre in Vegreville, Alberta must examine those three elements. The mere fact of making an application in this class does not
make someone a member of the class. This determination can only be made by Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC) after officials have verified the status of the applicant, including verification of his or her marital status and the bona fides of the relationship.

This requirement is in place in order to protect the integrity of both the Spouse or Common-law Partner Program and the Temporary Foreign Worker Program. If the mere fact that an application had been made in Canada could entitle a person to a work permit, this might lead to abuse of the system. It would allow applicants to "self-select" as temporary
workers simply by filing an application as a sponsored spouse or partner.

Canada permits the recruitment of foreign workers with skills that are in short supply in Canada only when such employment will not adversely affect the employment or career opportunities of Canadian citizens and permanent residents. This policy also recognizes that the admission of such workers to Canada helps create or maintain employment for Canadian
citizens and permanent residents, provides training or the transfer of specialized knowledge to the domestic work force, and helps strengthen a company's competitive position in the international marketplace.

In most cases, foreign nationals wishing to work in Canada must have confirmation of the job offer (positive labour market opinion) from Human Resources and Social Development Canada (HRSDC). HRSDC plays an important role in evaluating the need for foreign workers by assisting employers in their human resources planning, including determining if and when foreign workers are required. HRSDC assesses the employer's efforts to consider Canadian workers and the adequacy of compensation offered. It considers the adverse labour market effects of hiring a foreign worker. Employers applying for confirmations of job offers are
also encouraged to adopt strategies for training and hiring Canadian workers.

It takes time to process immigration applications. Priority is given to spouses, common-law or conjugal partners, and dependent children, together with Convention refugees seeking resettlement in Canada. Family class applications constitute the majority of immigrant
applications in many of our visa offices. This, coupled with the fact that visa officers continue to receive a high volume of applications in other categories, may result in temporary backlogs in some categories.

The Department is actively pursuing both administrative and potential legislative and regulatory tools to improve inventory management.

It is always in the client's best interests to apply abroad in the prescribed manner, if possible. There are distinct disadvantages to applying from within Canada, including noticeably longer processing times, lack of status, inability to work and ineligibility for provincial health insurance coverage. The immigration offices in Canada were originally created to deal with genuine visitors and persons in the enforcement stream; visa offices are responsible for selecting immigrants and issuing temporary resident visas.

When your husband's application for permanent residence is assessed and receives approval in principle, he can apply from within Canada for an open work permit. Until that time, if he wishes to work in Canada, he is required to follow the normal process: obtain a job offer
confirmation by Human Resources and Social Development Canada and apply for a work permit at a visa office. For more details on the work permit process, please visit our Web site at www.cic.gc.ca, or contact our Call Centre at 1-888-242-2100.

Thank you for taking to write. I trust that you will find this information of assistance.

This electronic address is not available for reply.

It's all about the paper

Mr. O's permit, dated March 13, arrived yesterday in the mail. It's good for three months, i.e. till June 13, which means we won't have any trouble coming back from our holiday in the States at the beginning of June. (Hey, it's always nice when your country of residence lets you back in.) Now we can direct our energies to the same things you nice people do, like uneducated clients and moody coworkers and TTC troubles. Hooray! Approaching normal!

I have had a hard time keeping my cool over the last little while as all of this has gone on. On one hand I'm as anxious/pissed/frustrated/worried/fed up as Mr. O (we do live together and love each other, after all) and on the other hand, I haven't had the same trouble he's had with things like getting a decent paycheque, getting around the city, etc. etc., and so sometimes I feel like he's exaggerating the problem or focusing only on the negative or simply justifying his desire to go home. I've totally blown it on at least one occasion, and I know overall I could have been more sympathetic. I guess this is a learning process for both of us...

I think I'm giving up my old ideas on why people move here in the first place. It's NOT because they get or think they'll get a better deal than they get at home. That's simply not true. There are a thousand different reasons why people might move here, and one of the biggest ones can be summarized as "other people," be them family or community or what-have-you. In other words, people come here because other people have come here before them.

Interestingly, Mr. O's new permit specifies that he has to leave the country by August, which is based on his original one-year permit. It will be interesting to see what our one-year reassessment will bring. Will we stay? In the meantime, we still have the actual residence permit to deal with. Hopefully it comes and he can apply for his open permit before his current temp permit expires, which would save us another round of papers with his employer (I know, the last one was just so much fun). But I'm not holding my breath.

Oh - another fun thing about moving: taxes! We get to do two sets for 2007 - Canadian and Finnish. I sent in our Cdn returns today after just one phone call to the international tax office, and it seems I will be getting some money back, which will go some way to replenish our "immigration debt" which is primarily owed to ourselves. A weekend trip, maybe? We shall see. The tax forms and process with the big fat guide, etc. made me all nostalgic for our PR application. Canadian bureaucratic jargon is such a rich, multifarious register. So many possibilities, so many interpretations. Sigh.

Cross finish line, exhausted

According to an agent at the CIC call centre, Mr. O's permit was mailed out yesterday and will arrive early next week. He doesn't have to have it stapled into his passport, like the immigration officer did with his first one when we entered the country; carrying it with him when travelling is enough.

When all's said and done, so-called concurrent processing means sweet diddly squat in terms of saving time, at least from inside Canada. My guess is that more time is spent on the LMO portion of these applications, to assess whether or not the applicant's job does in fact qualify, and whether or not the potential employer has in fact spent the due time searching for a qualified individual.

Either way, I'm just so relieved that it's over with. Neither of us got much sleep last night. Of course, in their wisdom his employer chose to make it only a three-month contract, so this isn't the last race we'll run...

National Post takes a slash at immigrants

Okay, not exactly accurate. This story by John Ivison actually gives an interesting account of how our little immigrant backlog got so out of control.

My favourite part:

"It is not fair for prospective immigrants to wait for years before being considered, and it is not desirable to wait that long for the immigrants the country needs"

Diane actually lifted that from this blog, I think :)

Jokes aside, the article is however somewhat vague about the type of applications referred to (it doesn't take four years for every application, so I have to assume they're referring to skilled worker class?), and it seems to simplify the motives of those people immigrating, as if family class applicants aren't as interested as every other class in finding jobs once they come here. It seems to me that family ties are beyond a doubt the greatest motivation for choosing Canada above any other random receiving country - a skilled worker might come here to be with his family despite the fact that he or she might otherwise get a better deal elsewhere.

The article also doesn't explain how the existing backlog will be reduced, but only how the government hopes to keep it from growing any further. From what I can tell the money promised will go to future applications, while the 900,000 poor suckers already backed up will still have to be slogged through.

It would also be worthwhile explaining exactly how immigrants put such a drain on the system as the Fraser Institute would have us believe. Oh wait, maybe they're referring to the brick wall most immigrants hit when, after arriving, they try to find a job. Riiiight.

Anyway, here's the article:

Ottawa moves to slash immigrant backlog

Amendment would reduce number of new applications accepted

John Ivison, National Post Published: Thursday, March 13, 2008

OTTAWA -- The federal government is set to reduce the number of new immigration applications it accepts in a dramatic change of policy aimed at cutting the backlog of nearly 900,000 people who have already applied to enter Canada.

Sources say Immigration Minister Diane Finley will table an amendment to the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act as early as Thursday. The new legislation will limit the number of new applications accepted and processed annually.

The act currently requires the government to process every application that enters the system -- a provision that has led to the huge backlog and a wait-time of around four years for an application to be processed.

"It isn't sustainable," said one source, who added that the overall number of immigrants admitted to Canada is more likely to increase than fall in the coming years, even if the number of new applications accepted drops dramatically.

It is believed the amendment will be included as part of the legislation to implement the federal budget, making it a confidence matter.

Maurizio Bevilacqua, the Liberal immigration critic, said the Conservatives don't understand the role immigration plays in Canada's history. "The Conservatives are shutting the door on immigration because they fail to understand its importance to our labour markets and our nation-building. The lack of resources devoted to this issue shows they are not serious about immigration," he said Wednesday.

In this year's budget, the government allocated $22-million to modernizing the immigration system. "It is not fair for prospective immigrants to wait for years before being considered, and it is not desirable to wait that long for the immigrants the country needs," the budget said, adding that the proposed changes will "more effectively manage the future growth in the inventory, such as addressing the number of applications accepted and processed in a year." The changes are designed to establish a "just-in-time" immigration system, where the wait time is reduced to an average of a year.

Ms. Finley has emphasized that the government is seeking to bring the "best and the brightest" to Canada.

"Immigration will play an increasingly important role in our long-term growth and prosperity, and we will continue to look for innovative ways to bring in talent from around the world," Ms. Finley told an audience in Mumbai, India, last November.

But critics contend that the new policy will target "economic class" migrants coming to Canada for work, rather than "family class" immigrants being re-united with Canadian family members, or cases where immigrants are admitted on humanitarian and compassionate grounds.

"The Conservatives are attacking family re-unification but it attracts many skilled workers to come here," Mr. Bevilacqua said.

The government has made no secret of the fact it sees itself in competition with countries such as Australia and the United Kingdom for the most qualified immigrants. This is likely to mean the vast majority of applications accepted in future are from the "economic class" of migrants that currently make up around 60% of newcomers.

Canada accepts about 250,000 immigrants a year, a figure that has increased since the Conservatives took office. The backlog of applications grew from 50,000 when the Liberal party took office in 1993 to around 500,000 in 2000. By the time the Conservatives came to power in early 2006, it was around 800,000 and in the past two years that number has grown to around 875,000.

Some estimates suggest that as many as one-quarter of current applications are more than six years old.

The Liberals made a number of attempts to eat into the backlog. For example, when Liberal MP Dennis Coderre was immigration minister in 2002, he raised the total number of points required for admission to 75 from 70 (points are allocated on the basis of language skills, education and job offers).

However, under pressure from the Liberals' ethnic voting base, the party backed down and reduced the number of points required to 67.

In 2005, with an election pending, then Liberal immigration minister Joe Volpe announced he would increase the number of immigrants by 100,000 a year -- a rise of 40% from existing levels at that time.

The Conservatives have long argued the Liberals allowed political, rather than economic, factors to dominate their immigration and refugee policy.

A report by the Fraser Institute in 2005 suggested that only 23% of immigrants are net fiscal contributors to Canada at a cost to the taxpayer every year of more than $18-billion (although 60% of immigrants are from the "economic class," fewer than half that number pass the points test -- the remainder are spouses and children).

The government says it has already taken a number of measures to make the system more flexible and efficient, including the establishment of Foreign Credentials Referral offices in China and India and moves to make it easier for foreign students and temporary workers to obtain visas.

National Post

LEGIT

Guess who's LMO came today?

More education, less opportunity

Another story in the Globe today about the education level of immigrants to Canada, after StatsCan released 2006 census figures on post-secondary in general. Turns out those foreigners can read and write some:

Close to one-third of immigrants are university graduates, compared with 23 per cent of the general working-age population, according to numbers from the 2006 census released yesterday. Those numbers also show a huge jump in qualifications of the newest arrivals, with more than half of those who came to Canada between 2001 and 2006 holding a university degree.

That's not surprising, considering the amount of investment and savings required to move here in the first place. Think about how much it costs to take a vacation, and then extend that vacation by about six months, supplemented by the occasional, say, babysitting or waitressing gig:

"It is tough, but that is part of the fun," said Mr. Fonseca, 30 [snip] his wife will likely take a job as a babysitter or in a restaurant at first, but hopes to eventually work in her field. "All of a sudden you come here and you are considered a nobody," he said.

I love how the Globe manages to find these plucky pioneering people, though. This guy has a great education, but he's beyond optimistic; he's borderline delusional in his attitude. We all are...

BUT WAIT! Maybe, as the spouse of a foreign student, this woman actually has an open work permit!? Where can we get one of those?