Feds plan to revoke fraudulent citizenship of 1,800

BY ALTHIA RAJ, POSTMEDIA NEWS JULY 19, 2011

The federal government believes some 1,800 Canadian citizens have obtained their citizenship through fraudulent means and it intends to revoke their status, Postmedia News has learned.The federal government believes some 1,800 Canadian citizens have obtained their citizenship through fraudulent means and it intends to revoke their status, Postmedia News has learned.

Photograph by: Richard Lam, Reuters

OTTAWA — The federal government believes some 1,800 people have obtained their Canadian citizenship through fraudulent means and it intends to revoke their status, Postmedia News has learned.

After a lengthy investigation by police and the department of Citizenship and Immigration, letters have been issued to hundreds of Canadians telling them the federal government intends to revoke their citizenship.

Individuals can challenge the decision in Federal Court but if they don't, cabinet will move to void their passports and strip them of their citizenship.

Some of the people targeted are believed to have used crooked consultants who submitted fraudulent applications on behalf of people who didn't meet the qualifications for citizenship — such as residency requirements.

"The bottom line is three years residency in Canada but a lot of people misrepresent the amount of time they spend here . . . (They) are actually living and working in Dubai, for example, but claiming they are in Canada and may be using consultants to manufacture evidence that they are here," immigration lawyer Andrew Wlodyka explained Tuesday.

Many people benefit from Canada's generosity while living in places where they don't pay income tax nor do they declare their worldwide income as they are required to under Canadian law, he said.

"I know some people who declare their income to be $30,000 when they live in a $5,000,000 house and they have a lot of property in Asia," he said from his office in Vancouver.

"We lose a lot of clients because we demand full disclosure, and a lot of the really good lawyers in town do the same, but clients don't want to disclose so they find consultants that will do whatever they want as long as they pay them," he added.

It is difficult for the government to track such cases because Canada doesn't have exit controls, residents can move easily across borders and it is difficult to track how long some have been gone.

Still, Wlodyka, acknowledged it is possible that some of the 1,800 may be victims themselves and have unknowingly committed immigration fraud by hiring unprincipled consultants.

Citizenship revocation is relatively uncommon in Canada. According to data from 2010 only 63 people have had their citizenship revoked since 1977, when the revocation process was established. Most were for reasons related to residence fraud, criminality, false identity and seven were for concealing their involvement in war crimes.

Speaking in Vancouver Tuesday, Immigration Minister Jason Kenney said the federal government was trying to discourage immigration fraud.

"For those who simply touch down and try to get a Canadian passport as a . . . passport of convenience, who don't pay our taxes but who do consume our social benefits, I think that's dishonourable," he told a group of reporters after delivering a speech to a Vancouver Board of Trade.

"There are many ways that we are combating immigration fraud and abuse of our generosity, whether it is from (bogus) asylum claimants, crooked immigration consultants, people smugglers, people who are abusing out citizenship program," he added.

During a trip to the Punjab capital of Chandigarh in India in January 2009, Kenney said he was "floored" after seeing thousands of faked documents that had been submitted with visa applications. Many of the documents came from unscrupulous document vendors, counterfeit artists and fake immigration consultants who can charge $15,000.

Canadian citizenship can at times be a safety-net. Approximately 15,000 passport holders in Lebanon used their citizenship to get out of a war zone in 2006. The federal government spent almost $100 million bringing them home only to find out that some had rarely, if ever, set foot in Canada and that most returned to their Lebanon, their real home, as soon as situation calmed.

Last year, the Conservative government introduced legislation to streamline the time-consuming and expensive revocation process. The Tories wanted to remove the decision making from cabinet and place it in the hands of the Federal Court, which could also issue removal orders earlier in the process.

araj@postmedia.com

Asylum backlog will stay despite reform

Photo of Tabaret Hall with the Desmarais Build...

Image via Wikipedia

Published On Tue Jul 19 2011

Nicholas Keung Immigration Reporter

Ottawa’s plan to fast-track the refugee system could be a “gift” for bogus asylum seekers in the backlog because they will be on the backburner — and not fall under new regulations — when new refugee reform takes effect in December.

The federal government is expected to roll out the new refugee regulations December 1, which aim to assess asylum claims, hear appeals and boot out failed claimants within a year.

However, claims filed under the new law are the priorities and must be processed within legislated time frames; the 41,500 backlogged cases are not.

“The Immigration and Refugee Board will have a significant number of ‘legacy’ cases in the inventory when the Balanced Refugee Reform Act comes into force,” said the board’s recently published 2011/12 planning report. “The IRB will not have the resources to resolve these cases.”

Critics said it is irresponsible for the government to implement a new system without a transition plan such as the “semi-amnesty” program implemented to remove a backlog before the launch of the refugee board in 1989.

“When you start a new ferry, you are not going to put 40,000 people on it. It would sink the boat,” warned Peter Showler, former chair of the refugee board, now director of the University of Ottawa’s Refugee Forum.

Not only do genuine claimants suffer, the long wait time can benefit bogus refugees, said Toronto refugee lawyer Max Berger.

“It will be a gift for claimants with fabricated stories because now they can wait to stay in Canada for as long as possible,” Berger said.

Currently, asylum seekers arriving at the border wait 22 months for an initial decision by the refugee board. If rejected, they can appeal to the federal court and apply for pre-removal risk assessments, processes that take months, if not years.

As of April, there are 47,300 claims in backlog, down from 62,000 in 2009, when the Conservative government delayed appointing new asylum adjudicators.

Ottawa has since filled the refugee board and hired 12 additional adjudicators to deal with the backlog. It is not known when the backlog will be cleared.

“We want to see what’d actually happen under the new system rather than making assumptions and projections, which are a guessing game,” Immigration Minister Jason Kenney told the Star Monday.

“We are focused on the new system that would hopefully deter bogus claimants from clogging up the system and provide protection to bona fide refugees. It’s our hope that by deterring false claimants in the future that we will be able to continue reducing the backlog.”

In 1988, just before the refugee board was launched, the then Conservative government implemented a special one-hearing process to fast track a refugee backlog of 95,000 by lowering the bar of the examination. The backlog took four years to clear despite a $179 million price tag.

Kenney has already ruled out a similar humanitarian program.

“A complete amnesty is inappropriate, but it is reasonable to do some form of humanitarian program for those who are well established and have been here for a long time because of the failure and inefficiency of the current system,” said University of Ottawa’s Showler.

Under the reform, claims will be heard initially by civil servants, who must render decisions within 60 days for claimants from so-called “safe” countries and 90 days for others.

Canada's immigration levels won't jump drastically, Kenney says

BY ALTHIA RAJ, POSTMEDIA NEWS JULY 19, 2011

Canada's Immigration Minister Jason Kenney listens to a question while speaking to journalists in the foyer of the House of Commons on Parliament Hill in Ottawa March 7, 2011. Canada needs more immigrants to sustain its economic growth but the Conservative government won't significantly increase immigration levels because Canadians don't want too many newcomers and the federal government can't afford to integrate them either, Citizenship and Immigration Minister Jason Kenney says.

Photograph by: Chris Wattie, Reuters

Canada needs more immigrants to sustain its economic growth but the Conservative government won't significantly increase immigration levels because Canadians don't want too many newcomers and the federal government can't afford to integrate them either, Citizenship and Immigration Minister Jason Kenney says.

Canada faces a labour shortage and needs immigrants to offset the balance of an aging population, Kenney is expected to tell the Vancouver Board of Trade Tuesday.

"Several studies have concluded that we would have to quadruple immigration levels from 250,000 to more than one million annually in order to maintain the (working) age ratio in the Canadian population. But that's not going to happen," he is to say, according to his speaking notes.

"We do not have the resources or ability to integrate a million new immigrants every year. We can't teach them English or French. We can't flood our taxpayer-funded services like health care and public education. We don't put such high pressure on housing and real estate markets," Kenney explains.

"We must also be very careful not to jeopardize the generally very positive and welcoming attitude toward immigration and immigrants that Canada enjoys," he later adds.

Only 30 per cent of Canadian immigrants are economic migrants, people selected on the basis of their necessary skills or arranged employment offer, Kenney notes. Another 30 per cent are the spouses or dependents of these individuals and 26 per cent are immigrants from family class while 14 per cent are refugees.

"People want to come to Canada because we are a model for the world. We can't, however, take all who want to come. There is a limit," Kenney says.

The Citizenship and Immigration Department is currently consulting with Canadians about amount and the types of people it should accept into the country.

Faced with a backlog of more than a million people in the immigration queue, Kenney says he has issued ministerial instructions to put applicants with experience in key occupations and those with job offers from Canadian employers in front of the line.

"We have enough parents and grandparent applicants for seven years, and this problem is getting worse," the minister says.

Kenney is also expected to announce that the federal government will increase the number of provincial nominees — immigrants that provinces themselves select based on their own economic needs — from approximately 36,000 to 40,000.

araj@postmedia.com

Twitter.com/althiaraj

Atlantic Canada Looks for Immigrants

Four provinces in Canada’s east coast, commonly known as the Atlantic Provinces, have launched major initiatives to boost immigration.

As part of the strategy, the Premiers (who are the elected leaders of the provinces in Canada) of New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Newfoundland & Labrador and Prince Edward Island (PEI) want to talk to Canada’s federal government about relaxing the cap on the so-called Provincial Nominee Program (PNP).

The PNP allows individual provinces and territories to select their own immigrants based on the needs of that particular province or territory. The federal government, through the department of Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC), together with a province or territory imposes a cap for every year for PNP immigration.

According to CIC, the national quota for PNP for this year is between 17,500 and 18,800 principle applicants.

But the PNP annual quota differs from province to province and some officials from the Atlantic provinces have been unhappy about that. They point out that New Brunswick, for example, has a population of 750,000 and is allocated a PNP cap of 625 every year while Manitoba, in the west, is allowed 5,000 under the PNP for a population of 1.2 million.

It is not clear, though, how many immigrants the four provinces want to bring under the PNP.

Attracting new immigrants has become critical for many of Canada’s provinces and territories. It is even more critical for the Atlantic provinces for four key reasons: keep population growing, keep pace with the developments in rest of Canada in terms of immigration, attract people with knowledge and attract fresh cash.

As one observer put it, the general population trend of Atlantic Canada is old, white and declining while in provinces like Ontario, British Columbia it is young, multicultural and growing.

Some of the provinces have already launched separate programs to boost immigration. For example, earlier this month, Nova Scotia launched an ambitious program to double its annual immigrant intake, to reach 7,200 immigrants by 2020, and part of the plan is to increase the PNP from the current 500 to 1,500.

One of the challenges faced by region is that many of the immigrants who move there do not remain there; they emigrate within Canada, mostly to major hubs such as Ontario or British Columbia after a few years.

But this might be changing. One study done by the St Mary’s University in Halifax, in Nova Scotia, found out that while 54 percent of the immigrants who had moved to the Atlantic region during the five years ending in 2001 were still in the region, this had gone up to 65 percent by 2006. Nova Scotia, in its new immigration strategy, plans to increase the retention rate to seventy percent.

Officials from the region say that immigrants generally fare better there, than in the major hubs. Some studies do show immigrants moving to the Atlantic provinces tend to get jobs appropriate to their professions faster and also earn more than immigrants moving to provinces such as Ontario.

Links to Atlantic Canadian Provincial Immigration Sites:

New Brunswick

Nova Scotia

Newfoundland & Labrador

Prince Edward Island (PEI)

Canada to Welcome Record Number of Immigrants Under Provincial Nominee Program

VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA--(Marketwire - July 19, 2011) - Provinces and territories are on track this year to welcome a record number of immigrants selected under their own nominee programs.

In a speech to the Vancouver Board of Trade, Jason Kenney, Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism, discussed the rapid growth in provincial nominee programs in recent years.

"Our government recognizes the importance of nominee programs in spreading out the benefits of immigration around the country," said Minister Kenney. "That is why we plan to admit about 40,000 immigrants in the provincial nominee category in 2011, five times more than the 8,000 welcomed in 2005. The previous high was 36,428 provincial nominees in 2010."

Traditionally, Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver have attracted a disproportionate share of skilled immigrants coming to Canada. However, the top three provinces for provincial nominees are Manitoba, Alberta and Saskatchewan. Thanks in large part to the provincial/territorial nominee programs, 26% of economic immigrants accepted as permanent residents of Canada are now destined for provinces or territories other than Ontario, British Columbia or Quebec, compared to just 11% in 1997.

"We understand the desire of provinces and territories to identify their own economic immigrants and that is why we have continued to increase our projected admissions for nominees each year," noted Minister Kenney. "At the same time, we are committed to working with our provincial and territorial counterparts to continue to improve the program design, integrity, selection standards and management of the nominee programs."

The provincial nominee program is also a good way to get workers in quickly. Applications are processed within 12 months on average, as are federal skilled worker applications under recent ministerial instructions.

Provincial nominee programs are being discussed as part of this month's cross-Canada consultations on immigration levels and mix. In addition, a comprehensive evaluation of the provincial nominee programs is underway. With the knowledge gained through each of these processes, CIC will be able to work with provincial and territorial partners on a longer-term approach to levels planning.

Ottawa urged to boost immigration, ease labour crunch

BY SHEILA PRATT, POSTMEDIA NEWS JULY 18, 2011

With another boom just around the corner, it's time to shift away from reliance on temporary foreign workers and concentrate on immigration, says Thomas Lukaszuk, Alberta's minister of immigration and employment.

Photograph by: Ted Jacob, Calgary Herald, Calgary Herald

With another boom just around the corner, it's time to shift away from reliance on temporary foreign workers and concentrate on immigration, says Thomas Lukaszuk, Alberta's minister of immigration and employment.

Lukaszuk is ready to push the federal government to allow more immigrants from among the 30,000 temporary workers now in the province, offering them a chance to settle with their families.

Employers facing labour shortages would also be happy because they could keep workers they spent the past few years training, he said.

Lukaszuk's first priority is to make sure Canadians in under-employed groups, such as First Nations and the disabled, are "fully engaged" in the workforce.

"But at the end of the day, even if we naively think we will get 100 per cent employment in those groups, we will still be short of workers," he said.

Last year, Lukaszuk ordered a review of the temporary working program by parliamentary assistant Teresa Woo Paw. Her report, assessing the effectiveness of the program, will be released in a month.

Lukaszuk hopes to garner support on the issue from his provincial counterparts in preparation for a ministers' meeting this fall.

"The federal government took in 280,000 new immigrants this year, the highest number ever, and that's great. But that record intake didn't make a dent in the 360,000 temporary workers in the country."

Since that number has been steady in recent years, it's clear the demand for workers isn't just short-term, he said.

At the height of the boom in 2006, Alberta had more than 60,000 temporary foreign workers - the highest per capita of any province. Many worked on oilsands projects but a lot of them left when the economic downturn hit in December 2008.

Recent federal government legislation has made the temporary foreign worker program less attractive Lukaszuk said.

Under the new rules, temporary foreign workers can spend a maximum of four years in Canada, and then must leave for four years before re-applying for another four-year term. Previously, a permit issued for two years was renewable several times if the employer could prove the worker was needed.

The new four-year rule means well-trained workers will leave Alberta to go to other industrialized countries, not back home to the Philippines or Ukraine, Lukaszuk said.

Feds asking tough questions about the future of immigration

MP Jason Kenney of the Conservative Party fiel...

Image via WikipediaFederal Immigration Minister Jason Kenney is asking some pretty tough questions about the future of Canada’s immigration program.

On July 12, he launched a national consultation in Calgary on the levels and mix of immigrants that Canada should be accepting in the coming years. He will travel to meet stakeholders in Vancouver on July 18, in Toronto on July 20, and in Montreal on July 22.

The bbackgrounder issued online by Citizenship and Immigration Canada reveals a department anxious to address big questions but seemingly constrained by the need to obtain public approval.

The department wants input on three major questions:

How many people should we let in each year as permanent residents?
What should the mix be?
How do we ensure a fair and efficient system?

The department acknowledges that Canada has an “aging population,” that we are experiencing “fertility rates below replacement values,” and that Canada’s labour force is experiencing “slowing” growth. Aging baby boomers are creating a bulge in Canada’s retirement rates, which raises the question of who will be there to pay the taxes to cover the costs of their care.

CIC describes the dilemma this way: “Although increasing levels would be one way to mitigate some of these pressures, it would require broad buy-in from the public and additional funding. Is that likely?”

It is clear from this statement that the department assumes increased levels of immigration will mean the need for extra tax dollars. In 2011-12, more than $250 million will be spent on settling immigrants destined to Quebec and another $600 million plus will be spent on those destined elsewhere in the country. It is clear that if we are to increase levels under a Tory majority government, we must either pick “better” immigrants -- those who need less financial support to get on their feet -- or we..we must simply decide to be more tight-fisted with our tax dollars.

The department admits that its flagship Federal Skilled Worker program faltered in the 1990s and early 2000s when the professionals it selected found “very low incomes” upon arrival in Canada. Even with a significant overhaul of the program, a recent study shows that after a full three years after arrival, 11 per cent of such immigrants remained unemployed.

The current mix of immigrants includes 60 per cent in the Economic Class, 26 per cent in the Family Class, and 14 per cent in the Refugee and Humanitarian Classes. The department is asking if this is the right mix. At present, it is keeping federal entrepreneurs at bay with a temporary moratorium imposed on June 24. It has also imposed a cap of 700 applications in the Federal Investor Program and, to boot, has doubled its investment and net worth requirements. As well, it is discouraging parents and grandparents from applying by making them wait in lines that are five to eight years long

Finally, what to do about the huge backlog of applications waiting to be processed? It continues to climb with a whopping 1,003,012 now in the queue.

I am glad the minister and his officials are asking these questions. It’s good to ask big questions, but you have to give people sufficient time and opportunity to answer them and be brave enough to take the advice, whatever it might be, if it’s in the national interest to do so.
Guidy Mamann, J.D. practices law in Toronto at Mamann Sandaluk LLP and is certified by the Law Society of Upper Canada as an immigration specialist. For more information, visit www.migrationlaw.com or email metro@migrationlaw.com

Immigration to Canada drops by 25 per cent

Image via Wikipedia

Nicholas Keung Immigration Reporter

Canada let 25 per cent fewer immigrants into the country in the first quarter of this year compared to the same period in 2010, raising concerns the Conservative government is embarking on a bold plan to restrict the country’s immigration levels.
The number of permanent resident visas issued by Citizenship and Immigration Canada between January and March fell from 84,083 in 2010 to 63,224 this year, according to figures obtained by the Star.
The latest department numbers show a decline across the board, with visas for skilled workers down 28 per cent, family-sponsored relatives down 14 per cent, and refugees dropping by 25 per cent.
The significant drop in visas comes on the eve of public consultations Immigration Minister Jason Kenney is holding on the country’s immigration levels and classes of people that should be allowed in. The first meeting was held in Calgary last week, and another is scheduled in Toronto Wednesday.
“It’s a very sharp decline,” said Myer Siemiatycki, professor of politics and public administration at Ryerson University, referring to the visas granted. “It begs the question: What is going on here?
“Has the government decided on the outset that they want fewer admissions? Is the tap being closed tighter?”
In the months leading up to the May 2 federal election, the Conservatives touted 2010 as a banner year in immigration, welcoming 280,000 permanent residents, the highest in 50 years. In 2009, approximately 265,000 immigrants were granted permanent status.
Commenting on this year’s quarterly figures, immigration officials say it is unfair to use the 2010 numbers as a benchmark since it was a record year in granting permanent visas.
“The department is confident that irrespective of lower visas/authorizations issuance and admissions in the first quarter, it will meet its annual target of visas,” immigration spokesperson Nancy Caron wrote in an email to the Star.
Over the last 15 years, Canada’s annual immigration levels have remained around 250,000, about 0.8 per cent of the population.
The Conservative government has announced it intends slashing $4 billion in annual spending from the federal budget, raising fears of further cuts to the immigration system. More than $50 million was slashed this year in settlement services.
“The success (of immigration) is determined by the resources. This government has been cutting resources and a number of provinces have,” said New Democrat immigration critic Don Davies.
“In turn, it is going to put pressure on the number of immigrants we can appropriately absorb.”
Immigration lawyers say fewer permanent visas could mean bigger backlogs, especially for family sponsorships where there is no cap on applications like there is for skilled workers and investors.
“The real problem with backlogs are the parents . . . The math says people will die before seeing a visa,” said immigration lawyer and analyst Richard Kurland. “That is the major challenge to Canada’s immigration system today.”
Immigration lawyer Mario Bellissimo said he would not be surprised if the minister brings in a new law to cap family sponsorship applications. Since 2006, the number of visas for sponsored relatives and refugees has declined, while visas for workers have steadily increased.
“The (immigration) minister has the authority to decide who can come to Canada,” he said. “If we get more applications than we can process, we’re going to return them.”
Since 2008, the federal government has made numerous changes to its immigration program in an effort to eliminate backlogs and process applications in a more timely fashion. It counts on capping the number of immigration applications it accepts for processing.
A department backgrounder for the upcoming consultations, which are by invitation only, suggests while increasing immigration may be one way to solve the growing demand, “there are clearly a number of pressures that make trade-offs inevitable.”
With an aging population, “immigration levels will need to be raised to 350,000 annually to support Canada’s economic growth,” said Anne Golden, president and CEO of the Conference Board of Canada.
Ernst & Young business immigration lawyer Batia Stein said the biggest percentage drop in early 2011 comes in the federal skilled worker and Canada experience programs, which are designed to usher in immigrants most likely to succeed in the job market.
“If our goal is to attract global talent and combat our aging population, there’s some room there to do that,” she said.
Ryerson’s Siemiatycki said Canada has a capacity to take in as many as 450,000 immigrants a year by including the 200,000 temporary foreign workers that it lets in to fill labour market needs on a perennial basis.
According to the government’s consultation backgrounder, Canada would have to increase immigration to nearly 4 per cent of the population to stabilize its “old-age dependency ratio.”

CIBC’s Launches Campaign In Different Languages To Reach New Immigrants

Image via Wikipedia

TORONTO – CIBC has recently launched a new marketing campaign, which includes print, online, in-branch, out-of-home and TV ads, featuring advice, expertise and products that are relevant to the specific needs of newcomers to Canada.

The campaign includes unique elements that reach out to new Canadians with important cultural tips and financial advice, through advertising in Chinese grocery stores, South Asian movie theatres, and malls and community centres in select neighbourhoods.

For the first time ever the campaign will also include dedicated TV spots in Mandarin and Cantonese during Asian programming and in English during South Asian programming in order to demonstrate our commitment to reaching these audiences in a culturally relevant way. The commercials begin airing this week.

In addition to highly competitive products and services, CIBC continues to invest in new and expanded branches in high growth markets. These branches reflect the communities they serve, with many offering banking and advice in multiple languages. CIBC also offers telephone banking in English, French and Chinese languages.

CIBC’s Welcome to Canada website has a wide range of helpful information for new Canadians preparing to move to Canada and to help them get established once they are here.

The campaign will have high visibility in newcomer communities nationwide, with a special focus on the Greater Toronto Area, Vancouver Lower Mainland, Montreal, Calgary and Edmonton.

Long list of problems for foreign labour

Saint Joseph's College on the north campus of ...

Image via Wikipedia

EDMONTON — Rossel Macapagal often works overtime in his housekeeping job at a downtown hotel.

That’s fine with him. He’s sending much of his salary to his wife and three children in the Philippines to give them a better life.

Macapagal, 30, is grateful for his chance to come to Edmonton as a temporary foreign worker, as are his two roommates from the Philippines. He would like to stay and bring his family to Canada.

As a temporary foreign worker, that’s unlikely. His two-year contract has been renewed until February next year. After that, his options are limited.

Macapagal is exactly the kind of worker Alberta Employment and Immigration Minister Thomas Lukaszuk has in mind when he talks of shifting to more immigration and fewer temporary foreign workers to solve the province’s labour shortage.

A skilled or unskilled foreign worker who already holds a permanent job is a good immigration prospect because “you know he’s needed,” Lukaszuk said.

“If it works out and the employer needs him, why not let him stay? Why ship him home and then bring in someone else to train?”

Macapagal has one possible option. He could qualify for landed immigrant status under the provincial nominee program. In fact, he has made a joint application with his employer.

“If successful, I could apply to bring my family,” he said, a prospect that brings a smile to his face.

But there’s a federally imposed ceiling of 5,000 applicants under this program for Alberta. Lukaszuk is pushing the Harper government to raise the cap.

The provincial nominee program allows employers to recruit specialized workers for jobs specific to Alberta. The job offer can also bring landed immigrant status with it. Or a worker already here — whose job is indeed permanent — can apply jointly with the employer for nominee status. Final approval rests with Ottawa.

Macapagal is hopeful. His hours are steady and his employer has been generous and helpful.

Though he had a job in the Philippines, Macapagal had known for years he would have to work overseas to earn enough to help his family get ahead. He worked for eight months in the Middle East, then a few years ago was accepted under the temporary work program for Edmonton.

Alberta will need an estimated 77,000 workers within the next decade, many of them long-term, Lukaszuk said.

Canada’s birth rate does not replace the population. That fact, combined with retiring baby boomers and a stronger economy, means Alberta needs more permanent workers, Lukaszuk said.

The temporary program is not a long-term solution.

Lukaszuk also has concerns about the negative social impact of short-term jobs.

The workers live in transient communities and don’t integrate into society. They send up to 80 per cent of their salary back home rather than spending it here, take up a lot of rental accommodation and are separated from their families for long periods.

“So your ask yourself, can we do things differently?” said Lukaszuk, himself an immigrant. “We can do better than that.”

Earlier this summer, Lukaszuk travelled to the Philippines on a volunteer project with friends from a Castle Downs community league and saw first-hand the difficulties faced by families left behind.

During those weeks, he met many people who had family members working in Canada.

“The divorce rate is high, people change when they are away, some start new relationships,” Lukaszuk said.

Though increasing immigration can be a sensitive topic, Lukaszuk is confident people would be open to the idea as long as they are reassured all Canadians are fully employed first, including underemployed groups like aboriginals, disabled people and women.

“I think Albertans will support this. That’s the way this province was built.

“We didn’t give people land, have them break the soil and pick the rocks and send them home.”

Terry Andriuk, at the Mennonite Centre for Newcomers, agreed with the minister that the current program brings a new set of problems.

She runs support services for temporary workers in partnership with Catholic Social Services.

Most workers who come to her office are afraid to complain or talk publicly, fearful their employers might object, she said. Their issues vary — employers who pay less than a contract stated, or don’t pay at all, or workers who get injured on the job. Or they get laid off and may lose housing.

On her desk are vouchers for the food bank, information about language classes and brochures on unemployment insurance. More than 1,200 workers seek help each year.

Andriuk, whose office also helps employers with paperwork to renew contracts, would be happy to see a shift to more immigration mostly, to give the workers opportunity in Canada.

Yessy Byl, a lawyer and advocate for temporary foreign workers, said more immigration would be welcome.

The longer the temporary work program remains, the more it establishes a second tier of workers in society, similar to the guest workers in Europe that make up a permanent underclass, she said.

“The attitude is they are expendable.”

Also, no one knows how many temporary foreign workers have gone underground since the downturn hit two years ago, she added.

When they lost their contract jobs, many looked for anything here “because there are no jobs for them back home,” Byl said.

But that leaves them vulnerable to exploitation — employers lower wages and provide no benefits. They also live without health care and other services, she added.

Canadian Border Services says it deports 250 to 300 people from Edmonton a month, but that number includes criminals (about 10 per cent), failed refugee claimants, illegal immigrants, student visa violators and “overstays” — workers who stay beyond their contract.

“For the most part, people do leave when they are supposed to,” said spokeswoman Lisa White, adding the agency does not keep track of how many foreign workers leave when their contracts expire.

Byl said the federal government recently added a stiff language requirement to some trades people applying for permanent residency.

If fluency in French or English had been required in the past, many people here today would not have been accepted, she said.

Gil McGowan, president of the Alberta Federation of Labour, said the foreign worker program was expanded in the early 2000s to meet short-term demand. It was supposed to be a program of last resort for employers facing a temporary labour shortage.

But it is becoming a permanent solution for big employers and multinational corporations, who want to bring in a lower paid workforce on big projects, including the oilsands. But that’s not good for Canadians or the economy, he said.

“Canada is a resource-based economy and one way Canadians benefit is by getting jobs on these projects.

“Instead, we’ve turned large swaths of the economy into a remittance economy.”

“On this program, I’m cheering for the minister,” McGowan added.

“This (temporary) program is fatally flawed and we should bring people in as immigrants.”

spratt@edmontonjournal.com

Immigration Canada

Feds plan to revoke fraudulent citizenship of 1,800

Photograph by: Richard Lam, Reuters

Asylum backlog will stay despite reform

Canada's immigration levels won't jump drastically, Kenney says

Photograph by: Chris Wattie, Reuters

Atlantic Canada Looks for Immigrants

Canada to Welcome Record Number of Immigrants Under Provincial Nominee Program

Ottawa urged to boost immigration, ease labour crunch

With another boom just around the corner, it's time to shift away from reliance on temporary foreign workers and concentrate on immigration, says Thomas Lukaszuk, Alberta's minister of immigration and employment.

Photograph by: Ted Jacob, Calgary Herald, Calgary Herald

Feds asking tough questions about the future of immigration

Immigration to Canada drops by 25 per cent

CIBC’s Launches Campaign In Different Languages To Reach New Immigrants

Long list of problems for foreign labour

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With another boom just around the corner, it's time to shift away from reliance on temporary foreign workers and concentrate on immigration, says Thomas Lukaszuk, Alberta's minister of immigration and employment.

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