Suddenly, a break for Canadian immigrants, Nihal Kaneira

Opinion, June 2003, Al-Jazeerah.info

Suddenly, a break for Canadian immigrants

Nihal Kaneira

Gulf News, Toronto | | 28-06-2003

With Canada being one of the few countries still accessible to people in the Middle East and Asia who are looking for greener pastures, unscrupulous immigration consultants have had a field day for over two decades, exploiting applicants willing to hand out hard cash to expedite the process. The government in Ottawa announced last week it is putting an end to this exploitation.

Even more surprising, the Minister of Immigration and Citizenship, Denis Coderre, said the government would create a fund to compensate immigration applicants who had got bilked by such consultants in the past.

This is one of the developments that seemed to brighten an otherwise increasingly gloomy picture for prospective immigrants to Canada in recent weeks. The other development that lifted hopes for prospective immigrants this week is an important ruling by a federal court in Ottawa that barred the government from applying its tough new immigration selection criteria on thousands of applicants who had filed their applications long before the rules were announced.

The judgment says the government cannot reject such applications until a class-action lawsuit challenging the new selection criteria has been decided by the courts. The ruling should boost the prospects of some 300,000 skilled workers, entrepreneurs and their families who want to immigrate to Canada and have been waiting for years for their applications to be processed.

The class-action suit, seeking $400-million in damages, has been launched on behalf of these applicants. It argues that the retroactive application of the new immigration law is unfair, as they had applied under guidelines in use before January 2002, and are considered backlog cases.

On the immigration consults issue, the Immigration Minister said he is seeking cabinet approval to revamp the immigration consultancy business, setting up a new regime under a licensing system that will require the so-called immigration "facilitators" to observe a strict code of conduct.

Coderre expects to have a new body in place for this purpose by next spring. This new body, which is still to be named, but is likely to be an independent and flexible regulatory body, will have all the authority needed to issue licences and monitor activities of immigration consultants.

Applicants who feel they have been victimised by such consultants will be able to appeal to the authority to investigate and redress their grievances.

The minister says he is determined to crack down on unscrupulous immigration consultants in Canada and overseas. "We have to make sure that the people, when they come here, they come here to fulfil their dreams, not have their pockets emptied by those vultures."

Up until now, immigration consultants – unlike immigration lawyers who have to pass a bar examination and comply with professional standards – have operated in a completely unregulated environment.

According to Coderre, Ottawa has received numerous complaints about unscrupulous consultants. The stories of exploitation range from people being taken for a ride to people being charge exorbitant amounts of money for minimal services or no service at all, and applicants being advised to lie to get into Canada. Some of the consultants, the government suspects, have also been involved in smuggling of people to Canada.

After years of widespread complaints from prospective immigrants who have been played out by consultants, the immigration minister was prompted to act last October. He set up an advisory committee to study the situation and report to him.

That committee submitted its recommendations last month. The proposals, including the call to create a new body to regulate the industry and impose stringent licensing requirements, will be the basis of a new immigration law governing consultancy work.

The committee has also urged the government to reinforce the new rules by directing the federal immigration department in Canada and Canadian diplomatic missions abroad to sever dealings with consultants who are unlicensed.

Under the proposed revamping, people who set up shop as immigration consultants within Canada or outside the country will be required to undergo training in order to get the licence if they are promoting immigration to Canada.

In an interview on Canada's political news channel CPAC recently, Coderre described the plan as one of the most important measures to come out of his ministry. He pledged to start introducing the regulations by the end of the year. Coderre seems satisfied with the advisory committee and believes they would play a big role in cleaning up what has become a messy business.

"The findings of the committee and the recommendations will help guide our actions in the future," the minister said. "There is no question we have to move to protect the interests of people who want to migrate to Canada. We have to ensure they are treated fairly."

But many new Canadians, who have had bad experiences with immigration consultants in the Gulf, India, Pakistan and Hong Kong, suspect that the government crackdown was prompted more by the revelation that these fly-by-night operators have been helping applicants to lie their way into Canada, or smuggle them into Canada, rather than a concern to end the exploitation of immigrants.

"The exploitation of people looking to immigrate to Canada has been going on for a long time," says Atirath Aich, former Dubai journalist from India who lives in the Toronto suburb of Mississauga.

"I cannot believe the immigration authorities were unaware of their nefarious activities. But now that they see some of these people are engaging in criminal activities and giving Canada a bad name, the government has decided to crack the whip.

"Still, better late than never. While I am happy that the Immigration Minister has started moving to regulate the industry, I welcome even more the plan to create a fund to compensate people who lost money to unscrupulous consultants. I know quite a few people here and in the Gulf who have been taken for a ride by immigration consultants.

Benjamin Trister, who heads the Coalition for a Secure and Trade Efficient Border's Security and Immigration Committee, says the solution is to licence consultants and weed out the bad ones. "Such behaviour harms Canada's reputation abroad, it harms Canada's national security, it harms vulnerable applicants and it causes serious problems with Canada's economic self-interest."

And people who have been bilked out of money by these unscrupulous consultants need to be compensated, feels Trister, who co-chaired the advisory committee that developed the recommendations.

The federal court ruling on the backlog applicants is also a refreshing break for prospective immigrants. It means the applications filed under the old rules, which stressed education, age, language ability and Canada's labour market needs, are still valid.

The new rules are clearly designed to bring immigrants with specialised skills and firm job offers - rather blue-collar workers with a technical diploma. Many applicants in the backlog are unlikely to qualify under the new rules. In fact, their allegation is that new criteria have been crafted to eliminate them from the immigration lists altogether.

All in all, a good week for people still looking to immigrate to Canada.

The writer can be contacted at nihal_kaneira@yahoo.com

Earth, a planet hungry for peace

The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers (Ran Cohen, pmc, 5/24/03).

The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers in the West Bank (Ran Cohen, pmc, 5/24/03).