[support]

The Honorable Members of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration:

We, the undersigned group of Canadian Citizens and Landed Immigrants are appealing to you to help us to reunite with our parents.

We came to Canada from all over the world and made it our home. We live here, we work here and we are raising our children here and we would like our parents to join us here in Canada.

One of the immigration objectives listed in Section 3 of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act is “to see that families are reunited in Canada”. In a recent report to Parliament Hon. Judy Sgro, the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration again reiterated this goal: “Our immigration plan for 2005 will help Canada’s economy grow, while promoting family reunification and refugee protection.” . But according to the CIC website the number of people that were admitted into Canada as sponsored parents has been declining every year from 19,376 in 2003 to 10,233 in 2004 and in 2005 the minister plans to allow only between 5,500 and 6,800 people on parental sponsorship visas.

If the trend continues in current fashion, it would take somewhere between 15 to18 years before the current applicants get through. It feels like Canada is trying to reach the final solution to the issue of parental sponsorship. At this processing rate parents will die before they are admitted to Canada. When have submitted applications to Citizenship and Immigration Canada we did not notice any delay when the government deposited the cheques we sent as a fee for processing the application. However, according to the CIC website, the processing of parental class applications has stopped in March of 2004.

We are hardworking people who contribute to the Canadian economy and pay our share of taxes. While we appreciate the opportunity that this country has provided us we believe that it is inhumane to restrict our ability to reunite with our parents on the Canadian soil. We believe that admitting only 5,500 parents per year on sponsorship visas constitutes violation of the Section 3 (d) of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act.

From where we stand today it looks like the so-called Family reunion is just a propaganda used to attract working age immigrants to Canada. We reproach ourselves everyday about how naive we were to believe the information the Canadian Government gave us on its websites for years that parents could reunite with their children in a short period of time. Now we are facing a harsh reality that we might never see our parents again and we are suffering because of this. The Canadian Immigration System has let us down.

This letter is our attempt to draw attention of the society at large to our grave situation created by the Ministry of Citizenship and Immigration. We respectfully request from the Committee to increase the quotas for parental sponsorship and to reduce waiting times for visas.

Canada has a reputation of being a humanitarian country. It publicly worries about human rights and democracy in other countries. We think it is a hypocritical to criticize other governments for not helping their poor, while Canada itself does not allow its citizens to help their parents in the most basic way of all, by physically being by their side.



Sincerely,