Archives for 2004

The CREWS program helps employers find skilled workers and bring them to Canada legally. But the program is up for renewal next month and is currently under discussion. ‘We’re back at the table discussing this because we all thought there was merit to the memorandum of understanding,’ says John McVean, a program director with Human Resources Skills Development Canada.

It’s based on a memorandum of understanding between the Greater Toronto Home Builders Association, Human Resources and Skills Development Canada and Citizenship and Immigration Canada.

The original agreement stated that up to 500 foreign workers would be allowed into Canada on a one-year work contract, renewable for a second year. Mr. McVean says discussions have focused on ways to improve the program — what worked, what didn’t, what must change — and they hope to reach a resolution before the Sept. 24 deadline.

An internal government document, obtained under the Access to Information Act, shows that Ottawa has contemplated an amnesty program to grant legal status to at least 10,000 undocumented immigrants living and working in Canada’s vast underground economy.

The program, known as ‘special measures,’ was proposed in 2001 but not included in the new Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, implemented in January, 2002.

Minister of Citizenship and Immigration Judy Sgro is now reviewing the detailed proposal and consulting immigration lawyers, unions and other ‘stakeholder’ groups, including Human Resources and Skills Development Canada, to resolve the question of how to deal with the tens of thousands of illegal workers who toil in Canada’s twilight economy.

‘We are looking at addressing the issue of undocumented workers and aware there is a shortage of certain kinds of [legal] workers in the labour market,’ France Bureau said on behalf of the minister yesterday. At least 10,000 undocumented drywallers, carpenters, house framers, painters and carpenters are working in the Greater Toronto Area alone, Andy Manahan of the Universal Workers Union, Local 183, said in Toronto.

The federal government estimates there may be as many as 100,000 illegal immigrants across the country.

They often earn less than their Canadian counterparts and live in fear of being deported or denied access to health care, housing and schooling for their children.

Some entered Canada as tourists and overstayed their visas; others failed in refugee claims and slipped underground.

‘In the early summer I spoke with the minister, and she was positive that this was a worthwhile thing to do, and that action would be taken to help regularize the status of undocumented workers, notwithstanding the security concerns of CSIS and the RCMP,’ Mr. Manahan said.

Richard Kurland, the immigration lawyer who obtained the draft report under access-to-information legislation, said it may be more difficult for a minority government to bring in such a program.

‘There is also a changed security environment.

‘Critics may say you are rewarding queue-jumpers, while security analysts will say by emptying the pool of illegals you are providing fewer places for terrorists to hide.’

The eight-page draft proposal notes it would cost $13.6-million to process 10,000 applicants under a one-year ‘special measures’ program, and as much as $120-million for 100,000 applicants.

The proposal concedes that the public’s openness to such a program is ‘not expected to be high given concerns about irregular migration and opponents’ arguments that Canada is becoming a haven for criminals and terrorists.’

The program could be detrimental to ‘our relationship with partner law enforcement agencies (RCMP, CSIS) if we are deemed to be ‘soft’ on illegals,’ the report states.

However, it makes clear that those involved in smuggling people or any other criminal enterprise would be exempt from the program.

Eligible applicants would include people with a record of arrival showing they had been in Canada for three years, as well as those with no record of arrival who had been here that long, including the so-called ‘illegal underground population.’

The report says that the program would want to convey that ‘we have worked very hard to convey the message that the new legislation will ‘close the back door.’ ‘

Applicants would undergo face-to-face interviews with specially designated immigration officers and would have to demonstrate that they had successfully integrated into Canadian society, found work and not relied on social assistance in the past year.

Unsuccessful applicants would be offered letters of introductions to missions abroad to reapply to come to Canada.

In some cases, they would be removed from the country.

Mr. Kurland suggested that the program may have been shelved temporarily for security reasons after the terrorist hijackings of Sept. 11, 2001, in the United States.

‘An amnesty program could dramatically reduce the scope of the illegal environment in Canada,’ he said. ‘The pool of illegals becomes smaller, making it more difficult for terrorists to hide.’

Last year, then immigration minister Denis Coderre raised the idea that legal status could be extended to undocumented workers who are part of the Ontario construction sector.

Q. I am a British citizen living in the UK and have a PR application in process. However my company have now offered me a position in Canada through the intra-company transferee scheme enabling me to get a work visa.

What I’m unsure about though is, will this create any problems for my PR application which is currently being processed?

Answer: There is no bar to submitting a temporary resident application while you have a permanent resident application in process. Nor is there necessarily any negative impact to having both such cases in process.

There are two potential considerations, however:

1. Ensuring the consistency of the information presented in each case. Inconsistency of the vital facts of the cases could potentially have negative implications for either or both cases.

2. A component of any temporary resident application is the admissibility of the candidate as a visitor to Canada. It is important to satisfy the immigration official that you are likely to depart Canada in the case that you permanent resident status is not approved by the time of the expiration of a prospective temporary resident visa.

Nearly all the immigrants who came to Canada in the 1990s settled in the country’s largest cities, a report says – a large jump over the number who settled in urban centres in the previous decade.

About 1.8 million people settled in Canada’s 27 metropolitan areas in the 1990s, Statistics Canada said Wednesday.

Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal got the bulk of the immigrants – about 73 per cent of whom made their homes in those three cities.

Comparatively, in 1981, only 58 per cent of immigrants settled in those cities.

Number of Refugee Claims Decrease

Increased security measures in Canada and the United States in the wake of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, have resulted in a dramatic decrease in the number of refugee claimants in Canada, advocates and lawyers say.

In the first six months of this year, Canada received 12,207 claims, the lowest number in a decade. This represents a 30-per-cent decline from the first six months of 2003 and a 45-per-cent drop from 2002.

More stringent visa requirements and increased interdiction overseas mean it is now more difficult for asylum seekers to travel to North America, according to lawyers. The United States — the first destination of many refugee claimants — has introduced stricter visa requirements for many countries, while Canada has doubled the number of interdiction officers overseas.

Karen Grose knows exactly what her downtown Toronto school will do with its share of the $65-million in additional funds announced by the provincial government yesterday to help improve reading and math skills for students from low-income and single-parent families.

The former principal of Parkdale Public School said the elementary school will use the money to pay for things such as take-home “literacy loot bags” and family literacy nights aimed at improving skills among the school’s largely immigrant and low-income population.

“These are kids that have just literally flown into Toronto, and it’s the first time they’ve ever seen another country,” Ms. Grose said yesterday. “They don’t have a schooling skill set that is as prepared as some other children, and there may be gaps in their education that put them at a disadvantage when it comes to reading and math.”

Ontario Education Minister Gerard Kennedy earmarked the funds yesterday for the province’s Learning Opportunities Grant, more than half of which will go to the Toronto District School Board and the Toronto District Catholic School Board to help pay for literacy and numeracy programs. The boards will be required to report on how the funds are used.

The funding is in addition to $95-million allocated to the grant last December and is aimed at improving education achievement for students “who are struggling the most.”

“This is a very urban grant. It’s obviously dictated in part by population and in part by the incidence of kids with these particular struggles,” Mr. Kennedy said yesterday at the annual meeting of the Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario. “Our urban boards have struggled because their factors have not been fully recognized. There will be significant dollars for anywhere that has those particularly vulnerable groups of kids.”

Gerry Connelly, associate director of the Toronto public board, said yesterday that the funding comes at a critical time for some of Toronto’s most vulnerable students. “One of the things we want to do as a system is level the playing field. We should be able to look at the city and not see a negative correlation between low scores and high need,” she said.

According to the Education Quality Accountability Office, a provincial testing agency, schools with the highest percentage of students from low-income neighbourhoods saw only 42 per cent of their students achieve the provincial standard for reading, compared with 55 per cent of students in other neighbourhoods.

Ms. Connelly said the $24.7-million allocated to Toronto public schools by the province will be used in 150 schools to help pay for additional staff, including literacy co-ordinators for early- and middle-years literacy programs.

“The first few years are absolutely critical. Anything that we can do to support students at that point not only helps them be successful . . . in literacy and numeracy, but helps them in all of their subject areas,” she said.

Q. I wish to have my spouse come to Canada to visit me. I would like to apply for a Minister’s permit for her. How do I go about that?

Answer: The Minister’s Permit does not exist since the implementation of the new laws and regulations in June of 2003. These provisions have been replaced by the Temporary Resident Permit, which has the same ability to admit a visitor to Canada who is otherwise considered inadmissible.

There is no application process for a Temporary Resident Permit. The decision to grant one is solely up to an immigration official’s discretion, and is made in the context of a standard temporary resident application. It costs an additional CAD$200 if granted. Award of such is generally issued in the case of medical or criminal inadmissibility.

Going into election day, many people anticipated a fierce two-way fight with the Conservative Party in this newly created riding, Mississauga-Brampton South. But as in other ridings across the 905 region, that did not happen.

Once again, this vote-rich suburban area that sweeps around Toronto proved almost impenetrable to the Conservative Party, despite it being an affluent area prone to supporting right-wing politicians and that the party’s decade-old problem of right-wing vote-splitting has ended.

Speculation is that the increase in the immigrant population has helped to support the Liberal party in this region in recent years.

Immigration positions influenced some voters

Political analysts said the unexpected victory this June by the Liberal Party of Prime Minister Paul Martin was a result of fears that the Conservative Party had a hidden agenda. The analysts said the Liberals played up the Conservative agenda — and voters listened. Some voters, the analysts said, feared the Conservatives, led by Stephen Harper, would cut taxes, repeal same-sex marriage rights, abandon environmental treaties, change immigration policies and move the country closer to the United States.

While skilled immigrants face great difficulties finding jobs in the Greater Toronto Area, they play an important role in keeping the economy growing, according to a survey of attitudes toward immigration.

The Environics survey, commissioned by the Toronto Region Immigrant Employment Council and to be released today, sought to discover what people living in the GTA think about newcomers.

The results were a pleasant surprise, said David Pecaut, chair of the Toronto City Summit Alliance, which formed the council last year.

Seventy-eight per cent of respondents agreed that the GTA needs skilled immigrants to keep the economy growing, with 42 per cent of that number agreeing strongly.

“To say that 78 per cent of respondents in the GTA understand this is heartening,” Mr. Pecaut said.

“We were surprised at the depth of leadership that the community has on this issue.”

Of the 1,000 people surveyed by telephone in April, 86 per cent said they agreed that employers who fail to recognize the value of skilled immigrants are missing important opportunities, with 52 per cent agreeing strongly.

Less than a month ago, a study by Statistics Canada found that foreign work experience is worth nothing in Canada and is the reason earnings among new Canadians are plummeting.

Thirty-three per cent of respondents in the Environics survey said they’d be more likely to do business with a company that went out of its way to hire skilled immigrants.

“It’s good business to employ immigrants,” Mr. Pecaut said.

The survey results are considered accurate within three percentage points, 19 times out of 20, and the information has been statistically weighted so that the composition of the sample reflects the Canadian population in the 2001 census.

Mr. Pecaut said the positive responses received in this survey, the first commissioned by the immigration council, reflect the ethnic diversity of Toronto.

He pointed to the 68 per cent of respondents who disagreed with the statement that it is easy for skilled immigrants to find jobs in their chosen field in the GTA.

“That says that people really do understand the problem,” he said.

Presented with the statement that Canadians have a responsibility to provide opportunities to skilled immigrants when they arrive here, 68 per cent said they agreed, with half agreeing strongly.

Mr. Pecaut said the results send a message to political leaders, especially those campaigning for the federal election, that help is needed for skilled immigrants trying to enter the labour force in their fields.

“This is an issue that really matters and must be addressed by politicians,” he said.

Q. I became unemployed soon after submitting my skilled worker application. How is this going to effect my PR application. Anybody with same situation?

Answer: Your application is based on the qualifications that you possessed at the time of the submission of your application. Although unemployment would not necessarily have a negative impact on an application, the circumstances surrounding such may have an impact.

An applicant who can demonstrate that time spent unemployed is being used constructively would be viewed more favourably than one in which the same time was not being used to his or her advantage. Try to be able to demonstrate that such time is being used to maintain or improve professional credentials and knowledge, and that it is not causing you to become disconnected from your occupation.