Question: I am in the process of submitting an application for permanent residence as a skilled worker. Can I be awarded points for unpaid work performed outside of Canada?

The RCMP has charged five people, among them an Immigration Canada official, with corruption and fraud after several raids in Ottawa.

The Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) and United States Customs and Border Protection have launched the NEXUS Air pilot project at the Vancouver International Airport.

The Canadian visa office in Abidjan, Ivory Coast, reopened mid- November, and resumed normal operations. The office is doing its utmost to eliminate the delays caused by the recent civil unrest in that country.

Draft-age Americans and their kin will no doubt be interested in the fate of Jeremy Hinzman, a former paratrooper who deserted from the 82 nd Airborne Division after his application as a non-combatant conscientious objector was turned down. Mr. Hinzman is now in Canada seeking asylum. He is arguing that U.S. soldiers committed war crimes in Iraq, and he would likely have been compelled to do so had he not deserted. To succeed in his claim, he will have to convince the Immigration and Refugee Board that he has a well-founded fear of persecution by the U.S. Government if he is forced to return to the U.S.Between 1965 and 1973, more than 50,000 draft-age Americans made their way to Canada, refusing to participate in an immoral war.

For a brief time in the mid 1980’s I resided in that jewel of a city, Hong Kong. The Sino-British Joint Declaration had just been signed, meaning that Hong Kong would revert to the control of China in 1997. Brits being Brits, they at the same time let it be known that henceforth most holders of British Hong Kong passports would not be permitted to reside in the U.K. There was a palpable sense of angst in the air as the city’s five million inhabitants weighed their options.