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JIAS CANADA'S SUBMISSION TO THE PARLIAMENTARY STANDING COMMITTEE ON CITIZENSHIP AND IMMIGRATION RE: FAMILY REUNIFICATION Editor's note: Following our submission, as well as those of our partners in the field, and two face to face meetings with the Minister of Immigration, one in conjunction with Canadian Jewish Congress and the other with JIAS Toronto and other NGOs, on April 18, 2005 the Minister announced measures to speed up the processing of sponsorship applications for parents and grandparents coming to Canada as family class immigrants. With these new measures in place, it is expected that in both 2005 and 2006, the number of parents and grandparents immigrating to Canada will increase by an additional 12,000 each year. This triples the original 6,000 forecasted for 2005. Minister Volpe also announced that Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC) will be more flexible in issuing multiple-entry visitor visas to parents and grandparents. This will allow them to visit their families in Canada while their sponsorship applications are in process, as long as they are able to prove that they are visiting temporarily. There are still a number of issues that need to be addressed to ensure that the Family Reunification Program is responsive to the needs of all Canadians. * * * * * * * * * On April 4th, Mira Thow, a member of the JIAS Canada Board, and Chair of our Advocacy and Legislation Sub-Committee, appeared before the Parliamentary Committee on Citizenship and Immigration to discuss Family Reunification. Below is part of the text of our submission presented to the Committee.
Family Reunification Issues Parental Sponsorships Canadian citizens and permanent residents are entitled to sponsor their spouses and partners, children, parents and grandparents. Parents and grandparents are given a low priority, with sponsorship processing at CPC-Mississauga taking approximately 2 years and overseas processing an additional 3 to 5 years at visa posts in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe and 2 to 3 years in Buenos Aires. We therefore have a situation where CIC is unable to process parental applications in a timely fashion resulting in significant hardship for many of the immigrants that JIAS assists. Families are not only prevented from reuniting permanently with their parents in Canada, but in many cases, families are prevented from visiting with their parents during the lengthy processing times. The allocation of more resources to decrease processing times is one solution to this problem. JIAS recommends the following additional solutions for consideration by this Committee: Visitor Visas for Parents Visa officers have tended to deny visitor visas to parents who are eligible for sponsorship, on the assumption that they are intending to remain in Canada permanently. However, there are many situations where parents want only to visit their children for a temporary period each year and return to their home country. Visa officers may nevertheless deny parents visitor visas due to their concern that should they decide to remain in Canada, the parents will not have been assessed to determine if they are medically inadmissible or whether their families have the ability to care for them. Visa officers are concerned that this will result in parents causing a burden on Canada’s health and social services. If visitor visas could be more readily issued to parents many permanent resident applications would be unnecessary as families would have the option of having their parents come to Canada temporarily, which they currently do not have when their parents reside in countries where Canada requires visitor visas to travel. JIAS suggests that in order to overcome the visa officers’ concerns in issuing visitor visas, parents could be required to undergo a medical examination and submit proof of private health coverage to cover the period of their stay in Canada. If parents were to go on social assistance while in Canada, they would be subject to removal from Canada under the current provisions of IRPA. Alternatively, the visa office could also request that an undertaking be provided by the family to be responsible for their parents care. Creation of the Inland Parent Class In addition to allowing parents to come to Canada temporarily as visitors, there may be cases where parents wish to remain in Canada if their families are able to support them. JIAS recommends the establishment of an Inland Parent Class that would allow parents who are in Canada to apply for permanent residence, similar to the existing Spousal or Common-Law Partner in Canada Class. To avoid the situation of parents who are in Canada obtaining preferential processing compared to parents processed abroad, CIC could establish processing times for the Inland Parent Class that would mirror those of the parents’ home country. Parents would thus be given an option to apply in their home country or inside Canada with similar processing times for each. Visitor visas could be issued to parents pending processing of their applications, provided they had passed their medicals and continued to maintain private health coverage during the processing times. In this way many families could be reunited in Canada, while CIC works to improve its processing times abroad. Allow Family Class Co-Sponsorships Reunification of parents with their families in Canada may also be delayed in cases where the children would jointly have sufficient income to sponsor their parents, but do not meet the low income cutoff on an individual basis. The current legislation does not permit siblings to co-sign an undertaking. JIAS recommends that the regulations be amended to allow siblings or their spouses to co-sign an undertaking, thereby both reflecting the real family situation where children support their parents jointly while providing CIC with additional sources in the event of default on the undertaking. Increase Immigration Target Previous Ministers of Immigration have recommended that Canada’s annual immigrant flow should represent 1% of our total population. This would mean that, given our population of 31.95 million (2004), the immigration target should be closer to 320,000 rather than the current target range of 225,000 to 240,000. As we understand that CIC applies a 60/40 split between economic and family immigrants, by increasing the target to 320,000, an additional 38,000 family class applicants could be processed annually, thereby substantially decreasing the backlog of parent applications. Thank you for your attention.
Presented by
Mira Thow, Member, Board of Directors
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