The Future of Canadian immigration

Meyer Burnstein a 20 year veteran of Canadian immigration policies has drafted a high-level CIC document that Lexbase believes will be the "road map of operational changes to come".

The document introduces provincial opportunities for increased federal support regarding the entrance of "low-skilled" labour, and facilitates work permits to foreign workers who are destined to cities other than Vancouver, Toronto, and Montreal.

The policies proposed under the new legislation if approved will include changes to the current management practices for temporary and permanent migration by way of "direct volumetric controls". This means that new "quotas" will be added to the list of managed immigration admittance criteria. "direct volumetric controls" takes its form as a balanced dispensation that alters the weight given to various permanent and temporary entrant classes assuming the distribution of source countries.

To address the political challenges that result from immigration as it relates to national security, Canada and the US persist in the "harmonization" of their border security procedures in an effort to jointly strenghten and safeguard common national interests.

Harmonization in this context will mean attuning both respective countries' external visa regimes, treatment of carriers and asylees, standardizing migrant rights, and integrating asylum, detention, removal procedures control, and humanitarian policies. To properly address these issues there will be greater effort appointed to building stronger links with affected communities. We should expect a gradual accension of various procedures leading ultimately to a Canada-US co-management of significant parts of the Canadian immigration industry.