OTTAWA — A two-year freeze on the popular parent and grandparent immigration stream officially lifted Thursday as officials braced for an expected onslaught of applications of which only the first 5,000 completed forms would be processed.
Temporarily shelved in an effort to deal with a backlog that had topped 165,000 applications with wait times as long as eight years, the program relaunched along with tough new criteria to mixed reviews.
While many welcomed the return despite the limited number of available spots — the government has typically received about 40,000 parent and grandparent applications each year — concerns remain about the fairness of the scheme and the political motivation behind it.
“Basically the government is throwing a bone to some communities in order to appease them,” Toronto-based immigration lawyer Sergio Karas said. “But this is a bad program in terms of the economic interest of Canada.”
Karas argues the program that allows immigrants to sponsor their parents and grandparents to come to Canada should be shelved indefinitely. Parents and grandparents, he said, are older and less employable which means they’re less likely to pay taxes and contribute to the economy and more likely to put additional pressure on already strained provincial health systems.
Noting the Conservatives have worked hard to court immigrant voters, Karas suggested the decision to freeze family reunification didn’t sit well with many, particularly those in the Indian and Chinese communities. Reopening the program a year-and-a-half ahead of the next federal election, he said, is certainly “politically expedient.”
Queen’s University immigration law professor Sharry Aiken argues demand will far outstrip the cap “when you consider the overall number of permanent residents being landed in Canada every year” — about 250,000 — and that many would-be sponsors will inevitably end up “gravely disappointed.”
She rejected the argument that parents and grandparents don’t contribute to the economy, noting many provide child care thus allowing parents to enter the workforce, and suggested they are not more likely to overburden the health system, since those who would are unlikely to meet standard admissibility requirements anyway.
“Anybody who looks at the actual terms and conditions of the new reopened program will be able to see quite easily that it’s a program that will benefit the most economically advantaged of Canadian newcomers,” she said, noting the plan could backfire.
“One of the reasons people choose Canada despite its bad weather . . . is that we offer people family reunification. . . . We need to understand that Canada is actually competing in a global marketplace for the best and brightest immigrants and family reunification is one of the carrots that we can offer.”
Under the new criteria introduced last spring, sponsors will have to demonstrate income levels that are 30 per cent higher than the previous norm and promise to look after the financial needs of their loved ones for 20 years, instead of the previously-required 10 years.
Sponsors will also have to submit proof of income for three years instead of one and they will no longer be able to sponsor adult siblings.
During the moratorium on new applications, Citizenship and Immigration was able to slash the backlog by half. By 2015, the backlog is expected to be about 43,000 with wait times of about 18 months. According to CIC, Canada has admitted 50,000 parents and grandparents over the last two years and is poised to admit another 20,000 this year.
A 10-year, multiple-entry supervisa, introduced two years ago to allow parents and grandparents to visit their relatives for 24-month stretches if they could provide proof of health insurance, was also made permanent last spring. Some 28,000 supervisas have since been issued and Vancouver immigration lawyer Richard Kurland suggests it “should dampen demand for immigration, because now it is easier for people to visit than to immigrate.”
Measures are in place to stave off a mad frenzy like the one that occurred several years ago when the government capped the immigrant investor program at 700 new applications, prompting some wealthy investors to charter private planes to hand deliver their paperwork. According to CIC, parent and grandparent sponsors can only submit their applications via mail or courier.
Applications will be considered in the order they’re received at the case processing centre west of Toronto and the new application forms were only made public on Dec. 31. Spokesman Remi Lariviere said it’s “premature to speculate” on how quickly the quota would be reached, but noted incomplete forms would be returned and would not count toward the cap.
“Sponsorship applications received after the cap of 5,000 complete applications has been filled will be returned to the sponsors, who will be notified by letter that their application was received after the cap was filled,” Lariviere added.
