Tuesday, March 12, 2013

Access to citizenship becoming more difficult – unintended consequence of policy changes?

Canada has always been proud of its naturalization rate among immigrants as compared to other countries. However, a recent Toronto Star article suggests that for some the road to citizenship has become fraught with roadblocks. Intentional or not, the article outlines how many immigrants “will have to wait as long as nine years to become full-fledged citizens.”
How did this happen? And what does this mean for immigrants, and for Canada?
Recently, we have been seeing complaints about an increase in requests for applicants to complete the citizenship residence questionnaire. On newcomer discussion boards in particular the key issue has been an unreasonably long processing time. This issue has been confirmed by the Toronto Star article. The article suggests that a “crack down on citizenship fraud” may be to blame, but there are a number of other factors that may be contributing to a dip in our access to citizenship.
Residence Questionnaire
The residence questionnaire requires individuals to provide information and a variety of documents as further proof that they have resided in Canada for three years. Many find it difficult to obtain all necessary documents within the timeframe allocated (45 days), especially without advance notice that this will be necessary. For example, some records must be requested and then sent from the individual’s source country, or picked up in person from the source country by the individual or a retained lawyer.
Proof of Language Skills
The proof now required to demonstrate official language knowledge may also be a deterrent to some applicants. Those who have not been educated in French or English must either pay for a language assessment test or provide the results of federally funded language course they have completed.
Citizenship Exam and Guide
Citizenship exam failure rates have also increased as a result of changes (made in 2009 and again in 2011) to the citizenship study guide on which the exams are based. The new guide places more emphasis on Canada’s military history and sports figures, for example.
Processing Times
Processing times are also getting longer at every stage. According to the Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC) website, it already takes 21 months to process “routine Canadian citizenship applications.” There are delays before applicants can write the citizenship exam, there are delays until residence questionnaires are processed (up to 2 years), and there are delays until citizenship ceremonies take place. The idea that immigrants may become citizens after three years of permanent residence must be tempered with the reality that processing times can double or triple that time frame.
Unintended consequences
These developments, along with recent changes that deny citizenship to those born abroad to Canadian citizens unless their parents were either born or naturalized inCanada, reduce the pool of potential citizens.
In our recent report, Shaping the future: Canada’s rapidly changing immigration policies, Naomi Alboim and Karen Cohl argue,
“Changes to the rules for obtaining citizenship are also weakening Canada’s democracy as growing numbers of people either will not be able to obtain citizenship, will have to wait longer, or go through ‘more hoops’ to do so. Without citizenship, individuals cannot participate in the fundamental aspects of democratic life, including the opportunity to vote for the municipal, provincial or federal representatives who make decisions that affect their lives. [...] All those who cannot or do not qualify, or must wait longer to pursue citizenship will be deprived, at least for a time, of the opportunity to participate in the fundamental aspects of democratic life.” (page 69)
ICC-CitizenshipSurveyInfographicENwebWe do not imagine that our federal government intended to decrease access to democracy for Canada’s immigrants. But this appears to be a consequence of some of its policies designed to “crackdown” on citizenship fraud.
Alboim and Cohl argue that such policy changes that lack, or run contrary to evidence, could have unintended consequences. They write, “Many changes to the family class and citizenship are based on anecdote without evidence to show the magnitude of the problems. […] [T]he sheer pace and scope of changes to immigration policy and programs creates a climate of unpredictability.” (pages 65-66)
A national discussion is essential in this climate – one that seeks to ask the right questions. A discussion about what kind of country we want to be and how immigration can help us get there. We believe that these four principles should guide the conversation and any subsequent immigration reform:
  1. Immigration policy should be based primarily on long-term social and economic objectives and a commitment to citizenship.
  2. Immigration policy should be evidence-based, comprehensive, fair and respectful of human rights.
  3. Immigration policy should be developed through public and stakeholder engagement, meaningful federal-provincial-territorial consultation, and democratic processes.
  4. Immigration policy should enhance Canada’s reputation around the world.
The time for a national conversation is now. In the coming weeks, we’ll propose some questions to guide us in this conversation. We encourage you to join us in this discussion.

Letter: Citizenship applicant caught up in bureaucracy

 
 
 
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Letter: Citizenship applicant caught up in bureaucracy
 

A Royal Canadian Mounted Police officer raises his hand as a group of 60 people take the oath of citizenship during a special Canada Day citizenship ceremony in Vancouver, B.C., on Sunday July 1, 2012. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darryl Dyck

Photograph by: DARRYL DYCK , THE CANADIAN PRESS

I am one of the approximately 28,000 citizenship applicants per year whom Citizenship and Immigration Canada suspects of fraud. No one has told me what falsehoods I am suspected of, but I suspect the CIC may be concerned about my suspicious holiday trips to Maine to visit my aging parents with my young daughter, or our visit to my husband’s dying grandmother in the U.S. to introduce her to her only great-grandchild.
Like an increasing portion of qualified residents who apply for citizenship, I received one of Minister Kenney’s dreaded “anti-fraud” Residence Questionnaires. This means that the unspecified suspicions of an unspecified official will leave my citizenship in limbo for another four years, or indefinitely. There are no official processing time benchmarks and little parliamentary oversight for the 10-15 per cent of us who receive the RQ. We have fallen off the map.
Minister Kenney’s CIC is approving fewer citizenship applications than at any time in the last five years. So like tens of thousands of other Residence Questionnaire recipients, and the 319,517 citizenship applicants total caught in the CIC’s ballooning backlog, I will remain taxpaying interloper.
I do not begrudge the CIC their right or even obligation to issue me a Residence Questionnaire. What I object to is their administrative mismanagement demonstrated in their inability to process applications in anything approaching a reasonable timeline. Qualified residents deserve a fair and timely path to citizenship.
Canada has long enjoyed a reputation for good governance. Unfortunately it is not strengthened by an opaque, poorly executed and seemingly capricious citizenship process rife with unknown delays. Qualified, long-time residents deserve better. Canada deserves better.
Eileen Finn
Montreal
 
 
 


Read more:http://www.montrealgazette.com/Letter+Citizenship+applicant+caught+bureaucracy/8083645/story.html#ixzz2NN54h5Vm

Saturday, March 9, 2013

Canada’s Selective Immigration Strategy: an Evolution

By: Diva Rachel
 
Canadians from coast to coast have expressed concern about the pending drastic changes to the rules surrounding immigration buried in the 400-page omnibus bill. As the House of Commons debates the voluminous bill, little time is devoted to dissecting the hundreds of policy changes. Those Canadians who study history regard the new rules with a different lens -- a return to tactics of yesteryear, of which few are proud today. Let us take a stroll through Canadian immigration memory lane. 

1867 -- A NATIONAL "OPEN-DOOR" POLICY 
Following Confederation, the newly formed country of Canada began to develop its own national immigration policies. Its open-door policy helped attract a more diverse group of arrivals than ever before, but not all the new immigrants were welcomed with open arms. 

1870s - BRITISH JUVENILE DELINQUENTS WELCOME
Between 1869 and the 1930s, Canada received over 100,000 juvenile immigrants from the British Isles. Most of these children had been brought up in poverty, and were homeless or living in the urban slums of the UK. Some were accused or even convicted of crimes. (cough.) Ottawa did not view their shortcomings as a barrier to immigration however. 

1885 – HALTING CHINESE VIA HEFTY HEAD TAX 
To avoid spoiling Canada-China relations, the federal government could not outright forbid Chinese immigration. Therefore, Canada passed the Chinese Immigration Act, which put a hefty head tax on Chinese immigrants in the hopes that this would deter them from entering Canada. No other ethnic group had to pay this kind of tax at the time. The head tax would prove to be profitable for the federal government, while effectively stifling the flow of Chinese newcomers. As the tax increased a number of times reaching $500 in 1904 (over $12,000 in 2012 dollars), it would prevent wives and families from joining their husbands or fathers in Canada.
 
1898 – BARRIERS FOR BLACKS
There was -- as government correspondence in Ottawa records now makes clear--a long series of letters exchanged among immigration authorities worried about how to be functionally anti-Black without seeming anti-Black. Since much of its recruitment of immigrants was done by mail, it became difficult for immigration officials to discern the race of African-American postulants. In U.S. cities where there were no Canadian immigration agents present to discriminate openly, civil servants would write to the local (presumably white) American postmaster and ask whether the applicant was Black. Those few Blacks in Canada had apparently got to here either by persistence or through accident. 
For example, for Blacks trying to enter Canada there were strict regulations on health, literacy, and financial support. These regulations were set up on the assumption that most African-Americans would never meet them and thus would not be allowed to enter the country. On March 21, 1911, a party of two hundred Blacks arrived at a Manitoba border station and requested admission to press on to Amber Valley, to which relatives had preceded them. The Canadian officials subjected them to the most rigorous exam possible and found that they could not stop a single member of the group. No one had less than $300 (or $100 more than the law required), all were in excellent health, and all had documented proof of good moral standing. During the pre-First World War years, Ottawa was under various kinds of pressure to exclude blacks. In 1910, for instance, the Edmonton Board of Trade passed a resolution to stop the undesirable influx of Negroes. Six months later, Canada would shift its underhanded discrimination policy to bar Blacks overtly.

1905 – ONLY WHITES FOR THE WEST 
PM Laurier’s Minister of the Interior from 1896-1905, Clifford Sifton, was eager to populate western Canada with farmers in order to stimulate the economy and help pay the national debt. The government offered free homesteads to applicants who qualified. Canadian immigration authorities rated newcomers according to their race, perceived hardiness and farming ability: If British immigrants are not available, other white immigrants would do. White immigrants from Eastern Europe (Italians, Portuguese, South Slavs, Greeks, Syrians, Jews) were reluctantly accepted in large numbers, but Black and Asian immigration is discouraged. 
 
 1906 -- INDIANS NEED NOT NAVIGATE TO CANADA
Then-Clerk of the Privy Council, Rodolphe Boudreau wrote on the restriction of immigration from the Orient, in particular British East Indians: “Experience has shown that immigrants of this class, having been accustomed to the conditions of a tropical climate, are wholly unsuited to this country”. He further goes on to write that the restriction of newcomers from India is “no less in the interest of East Indians themselves, than the interest of the Canadian people”. Then Deputy Minister of Labour W.L. Mackenzie King, went on a mission to England to negotiate an agreement by which Canada was made “distinct” in the British Empire, thus allowed to refuse certain classes of immigrants based on country of origin. 

1907 – JAPANESE GENTLEMEN’S AGREEMENT 
In 1891, B.C. provincial legislators were complaining that Japanese immigrants were “just as injurious” as the long-despised Chinese, going so far as to exclude Japanese residents from the 1891 census. In 1897, Premier John Herbert Turner’s provincial legislature unanimously asked the federal government to prevent immigration of Japanese, citing concern about “the lower class Jap” who competed in the labour market. Heeding to xenophobic pressure, only six Japanese immigrants entered Canada in the years 1901–4, while the "gentlemen's agreement" with Japan to limit immigration to 400 a year only became official in 1907. 

1908 – THE CONTINUOUS JOURNEY CLAUSE
To keep immigrants of Asian origin out of Canada, the Canadian government passed an Order-in-Council on January 8, 1908, that prohibited immigration of persons who did not "come from the country of their birth or citizenship by a continuous journey". At the time, ocean steamers crossing the Pacific Ocean from Asia stopped at Hawaii. The policy, a veiled aim at passengers from India, required immigrants to travel to Canada in an uninterrupted journey straight from country of origin – though, curiously, the rule was not applied to European immigrants. 


1911 – BLATANT BARRING OF BLACKS 
As Canadians, we too often adopt morally superior attitudes toward our American neighbours. While Black slaves who escaped to Canada in the 1800s enjoyed a better life here, it wasn't exactly Eden re-visited. In fact, Blacks were treated so inhumanely that after the U.S. Civil War ended in 1865, the majority of escaped slaves returned home. In 1911, PM Wilfrid Laurier announced changes in the Immigration Act banning "any immigrants belonging to the Negro race, which race is deemed unsuitable to the climate and requirements of Canada." This despite Black Canadians’ long list of accomplishments and contributions to the country: Matthieu Dacosta, hired translator for Samuel de Champlain in 1600s whose talents helped bridge the gap between the Europeans and the First Nations, Wilson Abbott (1801–1876), a successful businessman and Toronto City Councillor, Sir James Douglas (1803–1877) the Father of British-Columbia, and the thousands of Black volunteers fought and won the War of 1812 alongside fellow Canadian soldiers. Once again, our government defied factual evidence while inventing excuses to justify covert racism. 


1919 -- WEEDING OUT WORKERS RIGHTS ADVOCATES
Shortly after the Winnipeg General Strike, Canada made a dramatic move to bar immigration from central, eastern and southern Europe. The rising fear of international socialism and communism contributed to the creation of a very selective immigration policy meant to keep so-called "non-preferred" immigrants and "troublemakers" out. “Troublemaker” was a euphemism for non-British Europeans and Jews, who led the most influential strike in Canadian history. That year, the government's revised Immigration Act gave it the power to keep out any "nationality or race deemed unsuitable." The ritual of innuendo to mask institutionalised discrimination continued in as the entry of Ukrainians, Mennonites and Hutterites was prohibited on the ground of their “peculiar habits, modes of life and methods of holding property”.
 
1991 – REFORM PARTY RHETORIC
The Reform's early policy proposals for immigration were seen as highly controversial in Canada including a policy pamphlet called Blue Sheet that was issued in mid-1991 stating that Reformers opposed "any immigration based on race or creed or designed to radically or suddenly alter the ethnic makeup of Canada" . This controversy and others raised the question over whether the Reform Party was intolerant to non-white people and whether the party harboured racist members. Then-MP Stephen Harper emerged as a prominent member of the Reform Party of Canada caucus. Subsequent repeated accounts of xenophobic and racist statements by individual Reform party supporters and members spread this concern, though the party itself continuouslydenied that it supported such views. 

2011 – FROM REFORM PARTY MEMBER TO MAJORITY GOVERNMENT
Since PM Stephen Harper seemingly has free reign in the form of a majority government, the immigration file has been handed to Jason Kenney to chisel away the Trudeau legacy. 

Is Canada regressing to the furtive forms the past? Closing Embassies and Consulates, adding barriers to application processes or cancelling them altogether, reducing immigration integration budgets in the province which welcomes nearly half of all newcomers, closing immigration bureaus in the Prairies... The omnibus bill contains a plethora of drastic changes to immigration policy, including the delegation of immigrant selection to the private sector and pre-entrance language requirements. No details have been outlined in how these language tests will be administered, nor which foreign ESL accents will be deemed “suitable” for Canada’s “economicclimate”. No provisions to prevent the chronic employee-selection problem observed in numerous studies where French and English sounding names have a clear advantage when all other factors are equal. Concerned Canadians are wondering if the devolution of immigration will result in neo-profiling – yet another iniquitous and underhanded selection methodology. While they may be scattered in the omnibus bill, the Harper Government has, no doubt, its proverbial ducks lined up in a row. 
 
Source: http://deevarachel.blogspot.ca/2012/05/canadas-selective-immigration-strategy.html