Immigration in dire need of overhaul(ZT)
Jan. 22, 2005. 08:39 AM
Immigration in dire need of overhaul
Thousands remain stuck in frustrating backlog
Top officials insist major changes must be made
ALLAN THOMPSON
SPECIAL TO THE STAR
OTTAWA―Canada's immigration system works like a charm ― but it's also dysfunctional.
How's that for a consensus?
Former immigration minister Judy Sgro's problems have once again put the system on the public's radar screen. And even top officials, who insist the department doesn't entirely deserve its awful reputation, concede the time has come for Canadians to make some crucial decisions about what kind of immigration program we want.
"We have not yet faced these tough decisions," said one top official, who spoke on condition he not be identified. We will have to look seriously at proposals for radical change, he said.
In a nutshell, our current system just can't cope with the volume of applications from people who qualify under our rules to come here as independent immigrants or in the family class. And within Canada, more and more cases bounce out of an inflexible system and end up being dealt with by the immigration minister and MPs, creating concerns about political interference.
Sgro faced allegations of political interference before resigning as immigration minister last week after a pizza-store owner said in a court affidavit he was promised help to stay in Canada in exchange for working on and providing food for her Liberal re-election campaign. Sgro denied the allegations and said she was resigning so she could clear her name.
She also came under fire recently for helping a Romanian stripper get a temporary residence permit. The woman had also worked on Sgro's campaign.
Year after year, the immigration department succeeds in bringing in the 230,000 or so new immigrants the government wants. A majority of those cases are processed in months. The cases that take longer skew the average and capture the headlines. The department also processes nearly 1.3 million people a year granted temporary visitor, business or student visas. It put in place a permanent resident card program that was decades in the making and survived the wrenching bureaucratic changes forced by Prime Minister Paul Martin's decision to create the new Border Services Agency. Those things are considered a success.
The dysfunction is that the same system leaves hundreds of thousands in a frustrating backlog because we don't have the capacity to process their applications ― or can't take them in without blowing up the fine balance between immigrants chosen for their skills and those selected for their family ties.
"We're getting a very bad rap on image for some areas where the perception of poor service is because people are spending a long time in the queue," the senior official said.
Another official who has worked at high levels within the system for more than a decade put it more bluntly: "These backlogs are like a boxcar on a bungee cord, coming our way."
The government plans to bring in between 220,000 and 245,000 newcomers this year. For several years now, the department has imposed this rough ratio on its intake: 60 per cent economic immigrants chosen for their skills and 40 per cent who come in through the family class or as refugees. In reality, the family class usually accounts for about 25 per cent.
But in the skilled-worker and family-class categories, there are nearly three qualified applicants in the backlog for every one admitted. With more resources, or a policy shift, the department could speed processing of family-class applications from spouses, children, parents and grandparents.
However, time and again, Canadians have said they want a focus on independent immigrants who are chosen for their skills and who have demonstrated they integrate and contribute to the economy more quickly.
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`These backlogs are like a boxcar on a bungee cord coming our way.'
Federal immigration official
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So do we expand the family class and speed up processing, or shrink it and get rid of the backlogs ― the way Australia has ― by telling parents and grandparents up front there is little chance they will succeed in gaining admission to Canada? There hasn't been a politician yet who wants to make that choice and live with the consequences.
But even top officials concede the only way to impose that family-class ratio is by using bureaucratic red tape to stall the family movement so that it can be capped at about 25 per cent of the total. As a result, the department arbitrarily put parents and grandparents in a secondary category behind spouses and children, in an effort to slow family-class immigration. So family-class applications continue to accumulate like water behind a dam ― and officials know this is a problem. Some say it is a legal dispute waiting to blow up.
"This is a contravention of the right to family reunification. This is a court case waiting to happen and the immigration department will lose it," one former official said.
Do we stick with a system that keeps applications in the queue indefinitely, creating enormous backlogs, or pursue a radical change in approach?
One proposal, given high-level consideration some years ago, then set aside as unworkable, would radically change the way Canada selects immigrants, particularly in the independent class. Right now, applications from independent and family-class immigrants stay in the backlog until they are either accepted or rejected, a process that can take from six months to a decade. What would happen if we only brought into the pipeline the applications that were likely to go forward within a short period of time?
"If we want to be perceived as serving people well, we should not be bringing a lot more into the pipeline than what we need to process," the senior official said. Most times, there are more than 500,000 qualified applicants for skilled-worker immigration in the pipeline when we only admit about 130,000 a year.
A new model would look like the one used by universities to accept students. Would-be immigrants would apply to be part of Canada's annual intake. The most qualified applicants would get a reply within months that they were on their way to a new life. Those who don't make the cut would be told to try again next year, if they so desired. Their file would be closed and removed from the system. There would be no backlog.
Another problem identified by many commentators is a move away from discretionary power. Changes in the law and regulations over the years have ironed out much of the ability of immigration officers and managers working in the field to use their discretion when making decisions.
That discretionary power now resides instead with the office of the immigration minister.
"We've tightened the rules around discretion and created a situation where people who have no recourse run to their MPs hysterically," said immigration lawyer Lorne Waldman. "The exercise of discretion is too much tied to political connections and it shouldn't be that way."
A decade ago, Waldman co-authored a major study on how discretion is used in the immigration system. His recommendations were shelved and the topic has not had serious study since.
"The way it stands now, MPs have become the front line for immigration officers. Politicians become the gatekeepers when instead what we need are professional public servants and more of them," another insider said.
"The minister and the minister's office essentially becomes the country's immigration officer, what used to be the work of hundreds and hundreds of officers and managers," the former official said.
And immigration officers in the field complain they spend all of their time poring over documents and reviewing files, rather than sitting down with a family to assess whether they would make a contribution to Canada.
All of these issues are on the table in a federal-provincial review of immigration policy launched several months ago by Sgro, a process that will now be taken up by her successor, Joe Volpe.
The senior immigration official said the mechanics of the system are just the plumbing: how to design a system that gets people here ― after we have figured out whom we want.
Before fixing the machinery, we have to figure out what we want it to accomplish, he said ― figure out the poetry, then work on the plumbing.
Additional articles by Allan Thompson
http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/Co...le&cid=1106349011774&call_pageid=970599119419
