Total complete applications received since July 1, 2011


On July 1, 2011, the eligibility criteria for Federal Skilled Worker applicants changed.
Between July 1, 2011, and June 30, 2012, a maximum of 10,000 complete Federal Skilled Worker applications will be considered for processing. Within the 10,000 cap, a maximum of 500 Federal Skilled Worker applications per eligible occupation will be considered for processing within this same time frame.
Starting November 5, 2011, CIC will accept a total of 1,000 applications from international students who have completed at least two years of study towards a PhD and or who graduated from a Canadian PhD program in the 12 months before the date their application is received byCIC. Find out more about eligibility for this category or see the number of applications received to date on this site.
These limits do not apply to applications with an offer of arranged employment (job offer).
Applications received toward the overall cap: 5 614 of 10,000 as of December 19, 2011

Applications received per eligible occupation:

Eligible Occupation
(by National Occupational Classification [NOC] code)
Number of Complete Applications Received*
0631 – Restaurant and Food Service Managers500 (Cap reached)**
0811 – Primary Production Managers (Except Agriculture)59
1122 – Professional Occupations in Business Services to Management500 (Cap reached)**
1233 – Insurance Adjusters and Claims Examiners181
2121 – Biologists and Related Scientists463
2151 – Architects266
3111 – Specialist Physicians369
3112 – General Practitioners and Family Physicians412
3113 – Dentists407
3131 – Pharmacists500 (Cap reached)**
3142 – Physiotherapists104
3152 – Registered Nurses500 (Cap reached)**
3215 – Medical Radiation Technologists30
3222 – Dental Hygienists and Dental Therapists19
3233 – Licensed Practical Nurses236
4151 – Psychologists66
4152 – Social Workers255
6241 – Chefs53
6242 – Cooks134
7215 – Contractors and Supervisors, Carpentry Trades71
7216 – Contractors and Supervisors, Mechanic Trades163
7241 – Electricians (Except Industrial and Power System)74
7242 – Industrial Electricians86
7251 – Plumbers17
7265 – Welders and Related Machine Operators32
7312 – Heavy-Duty Equipment Mechanics31
7371 – Crane Operators4
7372 – Drillers and Blasters – Surface Mining, Quarrying and Construction6
8222 – Supervisors, Oil and Gas Drilling and Service76
*The number of complete Federal Skilled Worker applications received as of December 19 2011 is approximate.
**Once the cap has been reached, we can only accept applications for this occupation from people with an existing offer of arranged employment.
Note: Due to the high volume of applications we receive, the CIO cannot review each application for completeness on the same day it arrives at the office. The numbers on this page are updated at least once a week, but these figures are meant as a guide only. There is no guarantee that an application sent in now will fall within the cap by the time it reaches the CIO. We are looking into ways to minimize the effect of this on website updates.

Applications received from PhDapplicants:

Applications received toward the overall cap: 37 of 1,000as of December 19, 2011

RCMP begins laying charges in Canada citizenship fraud


OTTAWA, ONTARIO, (MARKETWIRE via COMTEX) — Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism Minister Jason Kenney recognized the efforts of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) on Friday in tackling residence fraud in the citizenship and immigration program.
“This week, the RCMP charged two people with offences under section 29(2)(a) of the Citizenship Act for allegedly attempting to mislead Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC) into believing they met the residence requirements to obtain Canadian citizenship. CIC officials referred this matter to the RCMP and cooperated in the investigation.
“These cases are just two examples of individuals creating the appearance that they were residing in Canada in order to keep their permanent resident status and ultimately attempt to acquire citizenship.
“Last week, I announced that the Government of Canada is investigating 6,500 people from more than a hundred countries for misrepresenting their residence in Canada. CIC has begun the process to revoke the citizenship of up to 2,100 citizens who obtained it fraudulently and has flagged the files of nearly 4,400 permanent residents known to be implicated in residence fraud should they attempt to enter Canada or obtain citizenship.
“Canadian citizenship is valuable and Canadians have no tolerance for those who commit fraud to obtain citizenship.
“We will apply the full strength of Canadian law to deal with this fraud. Consequences for citizenship fraud may include criminal prosecution, revocation of citizenship and removal from Canada. Permanent residents who commit fraud may lose their permanent resident status and may be subject to removal from Canada.
“There are a number of other ongoing police investigations regarding potential residence fraud across Canada. Our focus is on early detection and we have prevented a number of permanent residents from fraudulently obtaining citizenship as a result of these investigations.
“It will take time to work through all the cases and take appropriate action. However, the government has already made significant progress in dealing with residence fraud.
“CIC and its partners, the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) and the RCMP, and Canadian offices abroad have already removed or denied admittance to nearly 200 former permanent residents, and have denied about 360 citizenship applications where the applicants do not meet the residence requirements. In addition, over 200 notices of intent to revoke citizenship have been issued to those who have managed to obtain Canadian citizenship fraudulently.
“I urge anyone who has information regarding citizenship fraud to call CIC’s tip line to report it and protect the value of Canadian citizenship for those who legitimately obtain citizenship.”
Cases involving false representation, fraud or knowingly concealing material circumstances in the citizenship process – for example, pretending to be present in Canada to meet the residence requirements for obtaining citizenship – should be referred to the citizenship fraud tip line at CIC’s Call Centre at 1-888-242-2100 (in Canada only, 8:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. local time, Monday through Friday). Tips may also be reported by e-mail at Citizenship-fraud-tips@cic.gc.ca. Overseas callers can contact the nearest Canadian visa office.

Steve Lafleur: Make immigrants pay


By Steve Lafleur
The Canadian government recently announced a moratorium on immigration applications for parents and grandparents of Canadians under the family reunification program. The objective is to eliminate the existing backlog of applicants. A new renewable three-year visa category was introduced for parents and grandparents as a compromise. Given the existing backlog and the controversy surrounding the cost of the program, pushing the pause button may well be necessary. But rather than eliminating the program, as many opponents have urged, the government should instead find a way to ensure that sponsors are bearing its full costs. Family reunification is an important tool in attracting economic immigrants, who are more vital than ever to our economy. Before making drastic decisions, we should examine some of the benefits of the program.
Roughly 24% of immigrants to Canada are family class immigrants. Many admitted under the program are parents and grandparents of immigrants. Given Canada’s extensive welfare state, bringing in immigrants who are past or approaching the retirement age is extremely costly. After all, immigrants over 65 are entitled to CPP after 10 years of residence, and older people consume far more health-care resources than working age people (Half of all lifetime health-care expenses are incurred after the age of 65).
Many people concerned about the cost of family reunification will argue that Canada should reduce the number of immigrants accepted under the program as a way to reduce the cost of accommodating people deemed “unproductive” consuming resources in the country. But there are three important benefits from family reunification that are often overlooked and impossible to quantify.
First, many immigrants will not stay in the country if they can’t bring family members. The cost of having immediate family abroad can be a strain. Moreover, many of the millions in remittances that immigrants send abroad might stay in the country if closer family members were here. Since we need more immigrants to make up for labour shortages, and we want them to be financially healthy, preventing immigrants from bringing their parents can be detrimental.
Second, parents and grandparents who in many cultures live with their children and grandchildren, can provide valuable support to working families, even when they themselves do not work. Whether it is caring for the grandchildren, or helping with errands or tasks at home, grandparents do many things that don’t get counted in the GDP, but do save families money. In doing so, they may indirectly boost GDP: A grandparent available for childcare can make the difference between one income and two.
Third, it makes for more stable and happier homes. One might scoff at the notion of promoting family reunification to make people happy, and if it were its only benefit, we might need to cut down the program. It is granted that stability and happiness are not the primary benefit, but it is an important aspect to consider.
Since one side of the debate is primarily concerned with the economic benefit of immigration to existing Canadians, and the other side focuses on the benefit to immigrants themselves, the debate has been predictably polarized. A reasonable way to reconcile both concerns would be to charge an entrance fee to sponsored parents and grandparents through the family reunification program.
If a fee were to be imposed, settling on the appropriate amount would be difficult. One way would be to use the “net fiscal transfer” per immigrant as a revenue target. This figure is the lifetime difference between what immigrants on average pay in taxes, and what they receive in benefits. The most precise calculation available of this number is $450 per immigrant. While such figure understates the costs of family reunification, at least it would ensure that the immigration system is breaking even. It would raise the fee per applicant too $7,950. The amount isn’t unreasonable. The government could allow for gradual repayment or explore the possibility of increasing the residency years to qualify for CPP to bring down the cost.
Some might say that such a move is as unfair as the head tax once levied on Chinese immigrants, but the similarities are superficial. The head tax was a tax on immigration itself. There was no welfare state when the head tax was instituted. But with an expansive and underfunded welfare state, we need to ensure that we treat existing taxpayers fairly. Mitigating the costs of parents and grandparents of immigrants to our social safety net will be key to ensuring public support for the program.
National Post

Immigrants get fewer jobs, earn less


Despite having generally higher levels of education, new Canadians earn less than their native-born peers and are less likely to have a job.
Simply paying Canadian immigrants as much as their Canadian peers with similar education levels could be worth as much as $30.7 billion to Canada's economy, the Royal Bank of Canada said in a report Monday morning. "While Canada has done a great job of attracting foreign talent, integrating newcomers effectively has proven to be more of a challenge," the report states.
More than 40 per cent of those who come to Canada today have a bachelor's degree or better. That's risen from under 14 per cent in 1981, and it compares to 17 per cent among the Canadian-born population today.

Wage gap

In 2005, the entire population of immigrants working full time in Canada earned about $45,000 on average yearly. For recent immigrants, the average salary drops to just $28,700.
If all things were equal, immigrants employed full-time should have earned $57,000 on average, in 2006, RBC said. That implies their actual salaries were 21 per cent below where they should have been. For those who came to Canada very recently, the gap jumps to 56 per cent or about $37,200 per working person.
Working to rectify that gap could result in a shot in the arm of about 2.1 per cent of GDP that could be added to the economy in the form of increased wages.
"Underutilizing skilled labour is a gap we need to fill and immigrants represent more than 20 per cent of our population," the bank's senior economist Dawn Desjardins said. "Even small improvements in immigrant outcomes could contribute positively to the Canadian economy."
In addition to wage discrepancies, the report highlights a growing disparity in who's even able to get a job.
In 1981, the unemployment rate for immigrants and Canadians as a whole was about the same, at a little under 8 per cent. But by 2006, the rate for immigrants was 6.9 per cent, compared to 6.4 per cent for native Canadians. If typical factors such as education, age, gender, region, and experience were considered, the immigrant unemployment rate should actually be lower than that of Canadian-born people. The "potential" rate should be as low as 5.4 per cent in 2006, the bank says.
'Small improvements in immigrant outcomes could contribute positively to the Canadian economy'—RBC's senior economist Dawn Desjardins
Among those who had come to Canada in the past five years, the rate jumped even higher, to 12 per cent.
By gender, male immigrants had a higher earnings gap than female immigrants (24 per cent compared to 17 per cent). In dollar terms, this is about $16,500 for men and $7,000 for women. Conversely, the excess in the unemployment rate for women was larger than that for men, at 2.5 percentage points, compared to a 0.7 percentage point difference for men.
Interestingly, the gap in both cases appears to be worse in Canada's three largest cities of Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver. Immigrants in these cities had a wage gap of nearly $15,000 or more than 26 per cent; in the rest of Canada, the gap was nearly $3,300 or 6 per cent.
A similar story holds for unemployment, with excess unemployment of 2.8 per cent for immigrants in the largest cities, versus 1.3 per cent elsewhere in Canada.
"This report shows that we are still not recognizing the skill level and talent that newcomers bring to Canada — and it’s as much the country’s loss as it is our immigrants," the bank's director of Newcomer and Multicultural Markets Cameron Mak said.
"Canada was built on immigration, and that’s just as true today."
Source: CBC

Shortchanging immigrants costs Canada


From Saturday's Globe and Mail

In her home city of São Paulo, Brazil, Yane Brogiollo was a manager at Hewlett-Packard Co., where she oversaw a team of 15 database professionals. She also designed and taught courses for a local university’s MBA program.
They were “wonderful” jobs, and she earned a good salary. São Paolo was crowded, though, and too big. Crime was escalating. So a year and a half ago, she moved to Vancouver, hoping to find a better quality of life.
That hasn’t happened. Despite 15 years of IT experience and a master of science degree in computer engineering, 70 job applications have yielded only five interviews and no offers.
“The first thing they look is for Canadian experience,” she says. “If you don’t have that, they don’t call you for an interview. And if you don’t get an interview, it’s hard to show your skills.”
She’s not alone. Canada has a well-documented history of attracting the best and brightest immigrants from developing countries. But many of these people wind up jobless, or in minimum-wage survival jobs. And there’s a wider economic cost to the country of under-utilizing these skilled workers.
New research by the Royal Bank of Canada, to be published Monday and released exclusively to The Globe and Mail, puts a price tag on that lost opportunity. The study finds that if immigrants’ skills were rewarded in a similar way to that of Canadian-born workers, the increase in their incomes would amount to $30.7-billion – or the equivalent of 2.1 per cent of the country’s gross domestic product.
Closing the gap with Canadian-born workers would also translate into about 42,000 additional jobs.
“If we are going to continue to flourish and grow as a country, we’ve got to be very receptive to foreign capital, to foreign thinking and to foreign skills to maximize our potential,” Gordon Nixon, the bank’s chief executive officer, said in an interview. “I think it is very important that we have that macro discussion, particularly against a backdrop of high unemployment and financial global economic turmoil.”
Beyond Canada’s moral obligation to dismantle employment barriers, Mr. Nixon argues that underemployment and the persistent wage gap have a huge impact on the economy.
The problem is not just individuals suffering “social injustice or underemployment,” he said. Rather, it is about Canada squandering its own growth potential because it delays the ability of newcomers to put down roots by buying homes, saving for their children’s education or investing for retirement.
“If you look at what drives the real-estate market, what drives consumer spending – unemployment and wealth and incomes [are] key drivers in terms of that, so it filters right across the economy,” said Mr. Nixon.
The study uses details from the last census to calculate the earnings gap between immigrants and Canadian-born workers. It also explores reasons for that gap, which widened between the 1970s and 2000s – even though newcomers’ education levels increased.
This year’s report is a follow-up to one the bank produced in 2005, called The Diversity Advantage: A Case for Canada’s 21st Century Economy, which pegged the cost at $13-billion. The new study puts the figure much higher, as its methodology changed to factor in the different educational, demographic and geographic profile of immigrants to Canada.
THE PROBLEM
The recession was hard on recent immigrants. Employment tumbled 12.9 per cent among new immigrants in the downturn, led by a slump in factory jobs, compared with a 2.2-per-cent drop for Canadian-born workers, Statistics Canada figures show.
As of November, the jobless rate among Canadian-born workers was 6.3 per cent, compared with 8.4 per cent for all landed immigrants and 13.4 per cent for recent immigrants, according to Statistics Canada.
Businesses, academics and community leaders are sounding the alarm on this issue – warning that broader Canadian society will pay a steep price if new immigrants continue to struggle with underemployment and a yawning wage gap.
“We need immigrants,” said John Tory, the former Rogers Communications executive and past leader of the Ontario Progressive Conservative Party, in a recent speech. “We need them in our work force, we need them to sustain and expand not only the labour market, but our consumer market as well. And they want to be here. But there are still significant hurdles to overcome, and we need to come together to find a solution quickly.”
Consumer spending accounts for 60 to 70 per cent of the Canadian economy. There is little doubt that underemployment and the sizable income gap facing newcomers have far-reaching consequences for both consumer spending and overall economic growth.
Jamil Rehman’s story illustrates the cost of underemployment. The electrical engineer speaks seven languages and held a well-paying job in Peshawar, Pakistan, near the border of Afghanistan. Growing tensions in the region – and word that Canada needed skilled workers – landed him in Markham, Ont. in 2004.
Since then, he’s held a series of low-paying jobs, including sales at Wal-Mart and cleaning fish at Sobey’s. He has never earned more than $32,000 a year. Mr. Rehman (who asked his name be changed) was laid off from his last job a few months ago and hasn’t found work since.
He’s trying to get his professional designation as an engineer in Canada, but that requires one year of experience in the country – and so far, no employer has given him a shot.
“I knew, coming here, I would have to work all these odd jobs, which I don’t mind for a period of time,” he says. “But now, there’s a six-year gap, and no one wants to hire me.”
The father of two estimates his living standards have fallen by half in Canada – his family has had to rent a basement apartment, buy low-cost food, and acquire used furniture. It has put stresses on his marriage. And he wonders if part of the problem is his foreign-sounding name and accent.
Research shows he’s right. Résumés with English-sounding names receive, on average, 35 per cent more callbacks from employers than those with foreign-sounding names, a study this fall by University of Toronto researchers found.
Frustration is a common theme. “I came here to give, not only to get,” said Endrit Mullisi, a chemist from Albania who immigrated to Canada in 2009. Despite his science background, his main work experience has been in the non-profit sector.
The federal government says it’s concerned about the gaps. “I am very worried,” said Immigration Minister Jason Kenney in an interview. “My No. 1 preoccupation has been to reduce and eliminate that gap and we are making great strides in that direction.”
THE SOLUTIONS
Canada is not the only country that struggles to integrate its immigrants. It fares better than Europe and the U.S., according to a Migrant Integration Policy Index released earlier this year.
But everyone from Mr. Kenney to economists and researchers know there’s room for improvement. Mr. Kenney says his department’s own evaluation is showing a “turnaround” for some immigrant streams.
Last month, Mr. Kenney announced the number of immigrants admitted under the Canadian Experience Class program was projected rise to 7,000 in 2012 from 2,545 in 2009 – making it Canada’s fastest-growing immigration program. It is designed to fast track permanent residency applications for skilled foreign workers who are already in Canada and international students who have graduated from Canadian colleges and universities. Since those applicants have already spent time in Canada, either on temporary permits or student visas, they are considered to be better positioned for labour market integration.
The immigrant wage gap may stem from both real skill differences between them and Canadian-born workers, and labour market inefficiencies that prevent immigrants from making full use of their skills, the RBC study concludes.
Still, assistant chief economist Dawn Desjardins, one of the authors, says evidence on what’s driving the gap is “scant.”
There are plenty of successes – particularly with programs that help newcomers network and forge connections to the labour market. In Toronto, a half-year mentoring program that matches newcomers with established professionals has resulted in 70 per cent of them finding work in their fields. A new training program at York University aimed at integrating skilled workers into the labour market has already seen 82 people find meaningful work of the 250 enrolled.
Perhaps most of encouraging of all, more employers are seeing the benefits of hiring people with global experience. It breeds innovation, they say, and helps bolster their plans to expand internationally.
Waterloo-based Maplesoft Technologies, a unit of Cybernet Systems Co. in Japan, is hiring newcomers to help them compete globally. “Having people that have local knowledge of those markets, for us we felt it’s critical,” said Jim Dell, vice-president of marketing.
Back in Vancouver, Ms. Brogiollo is waiting for her chance. She hasn’t given up on the Canadian dream yet, and has no plans to return to Brazil. But she hopes her luck will turn, and soon.
“I was in a good job in my country – I was recognized. I knew it would be a challenge coming to Canada, and that I would have to be prepared to spend time looking, and adapting. But actually, it has been much harder than I thought.”


Why are Hungarian Roma seeking asylum in Canada?




Aladàr Horvàth, a former member of the Hungarian parliament and now chairman of the Roma Civil Rights Foundation in Hungary and lecturer at Brown University in Rhode Island, describes repressive government laws disproportionately affecting Roma and a generalized hatred toward them that makes them feel physically threatened.
A high-profile Roma intellectual in Hungary with ties to a junior party in the country’s coalition government is seeking refugee status in Canada, which Roma rights activists say bolsters their claim that Hungarian Roma are fleeing to Canada because of a real fear of persecution, not for economic reasons.

István Kamarás is one of thousands of Hungarians who have come to Canada seeking asylum since Canada lifted visa requirements for Hungarian nationals in 2008. Hungary was Canada’s top asylum claimant source country in 2010, with 2,297 cases referred to the Immigration and Refugee Board.

It appears that it will hold the top spot again in 2011, as figures for the first nine months of the year show 2,545 Hungarian referrals, more than 1,000 above the second-highest source country, China.

While Canada doesn’t keep statistics on ethnicity, community members say Roma—a stateless ethnic group prominent in Europe and sometimes pejoratively called Gypsies—make up most of Hungary’s asylum claimants.

Roma advocates say both the Hungarian government and people discriminate against Roma leading them to flee. But Immigration Minister Jason Kenney has questioned why “the democratic European Union” is sending Canada more asylum claimants than Asia or Africa.

The Hungarian government has said most Hungarians coming to Canada do it for economic reasons, to find jobs and a better living. Canada has accepted less than 10 per cent of the Hungarian refugee claims since 2009.

Mr. Kamarás is a historian and political scientist who headed a program meant to help talented Roma get an education to become leaders in Hungarian society.

Before leaving Hungary, he said, in emailed responses to questions from Embassy translated into English, he was also the president of a group acting as the Roma arm of the KDNP, the Christian Democratic People’s Party, a junior partner in government to Hungary’s ruling party, Fidesz. He said he was also the unpaid adviser on Roma affairs to Hungarian Deputy Prime Minister Zsolt Semjén, a member of KDNP.

The party and Hungarian government have distanced themselves from Mr. Kamarás since news of his flight to Canada broke in Hungary, saying he didn’t have an official job advising Mr. Semjén. The Hungarian English-language news website Politics.hu reported that he had been advising Mr. Semjén and Hungary’s state secretary for social inclusion, but became convinced they weren’t listening.

The website quoted a Hungarian daily, Népszava, as reporting that Mr. Kamarás and his family moved to Canada over the summer, “ostensibly because he did not wish to give his name to what he called the government’s plan to keep the Roma population impoverished.”

Mr. Kamarás confirmed that in the email and added that he left “because of the ever-growing, strengthening, aggressive prejudice against Roma.”

The Hungarian government this fall released a 10-year Roma social inclusion strategy, and an action plan that would see the government spend $900 million in the next three years to improve the Roma people’s health, employment, housing, and education situation.

Gina Csanyi-Robah, executive director of the Roma Community Centre in Toronto, earlier this week confirmed that Mr. Kamarás is in Toronto seeking asylum.

“It’s important for us to share this because the [Canadian] government has created this kind of belief among Canadians that it’s only the lowest of the low coming here, that it’s Roma just coming here for economic reasons to get a fatter welfare cheque—stuff that’s completely unfounded,” she said in a phone interview.

“But if you have people coming now who were aides to the government…feel that it’s not safe for them to continue living in Hungary any longer, I think that this brings the conversation to a different level now. Maybe to a level that we could start talking honesty about the problem that exists over there.”

Hungarian Deputy Head of Mission Tamás Király said he didn’t know the specifics of Mr. Kamarás’ case, but that he finds it “paradoxical.”

“Obviously he’s not the only high-profile Roma intellectual in Hungary who is working with the government on the Roma action plan, and somehow he turns out to be the one who somehow found this way of expressing his disagreement of how or which direction things are going,” he said.

Mr. Kamarás said other Hungarian Roma leaders know their community’s situation is unacceptable and untenable, but because of intimidation and bribery, they don’t criticize the government.

Economic migration, or fear of persecution?

Mr. Király noted another case of a Hungarian couple. The husband was working for the Hungarian police. He said they emailed his embassy about how to apply for refugee status in Canada.

“We have to explain to them that if they apply for refugee status in Canada that it means that they are escaping from us, from the Hungarian government—so we are not even supposed to know about it,” he exclaimed.

There is a lot of misinformation about what a refugee claim means, he said.

“We do find that to a large extent the migration to Canada is an economic migration, to find jobs and to find a better living.”

Mr. Kenney has also questioned the veracity of Hungarian Roma refugee claims. In April 2010, he highlighted in the House of Commons a police investigation in which some Roma asylum seekers were accused of being “coached to come to Canada, make a false claim, and then register for provincial welfare benefits.”

The year before, he called Czech Roma claims “bogus.” Canada imposed visa requirements in 2009 on the Czech Republic and Mexico, two of the top refugee claimant source countries at the time.

Earlier this year, the National Post reported that Mr. Kenney said the Hungarian Roma influx is “very peculiar,” “bizarre,” and “very well-organized.”

But Roma advocates such as Aladàr Horvàth, whom Ms. Csanyi-Robah called the Martin Luther King of the Roma community, have a different take. Mr. Horvàth is a former member of the Hungarian parliament for a party that opposes the current government. He is now chairman of the Roma Civil Rights Foundation in Hungary and is a lecturer at Brown University in Rhode Island.

The Munk School of Global Affairs at the University of Toronto invited Mr. Horvàth to speak on the Hungarian Roma situation on Dec. 7. While in Canada, he also travelled to Ottawa to speak to members of the House international human rights subcommittee, and Embassy.

Mr. Horvàth, speaking through an interpreter, described repressive government laws disproportionately affecting Roma and a generalized hatred toward them that makes them feel physically threatened.

For instance, he talked of a “forced labour” law that is set to come into effect on Jan. 1 that he said could see jobless people travel up to 300 kilometres to do public works projects, and live in containers in guarded labour camps.

He said it’s already being modelled in Gyöngyöspata, a town northeast of the country’s capital, Budapest, where conflict between right-wing militants and Roma erupted last spring, creating international headlines and leading to what some media reported as an evacuation of about 270 Roma residents.

Government officials called it a pre-planned holiday. Mr. Horvàth called the labour law “a Gypsy law,” saying it disproportionately affects the Roma and comparing it to anti-Jewish laws Hungary introduced in the 1930s and 1940s.

He said for the last 25 years there has been a “cold war” between Hungary’s political right and left, leading to a weakened state, and the current state of political affairs in which Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s centre-right government and the far-right party Jobbik “feed off of each other” displaying neo-fascist tendencies.

He described an 800,000-strong underclass in deep poverty, equivalent to that of sub-Saharan Africa, about 35 to 40 per cent of which is Roma.

Mr. Király, the embassy official, gave somewhat different numbers, but they showed a similar trend: the Roma are over-represented in Hungary’s poor population. Of the about 750,000 Roma in Hungary (7.5 per cent of the total population), he said 500,000 to 600,000 are in deep poverty. That makes up about half of the extremely poor people in the country.

“If you look at the numbers, this is serious,” said Mr. Király.

“Obviously, the Roma community in Hungary is in a difficult situation, and it cannot be changed overnight. So the government strategy and action plan is medium- and long-term. And of course the government is doing immediate steps as well.”

He acknowledged that government plans in the last 20 years haven’t led to significant improvements, but said the current plan is “more clearly focused and more co-ordinated.”

Anti-discrimination mechanisms within it allow for mediation and conflict management, he said, to patch up social tensions. And, he said no one is forcing anyone to move as part of the labour law Mr. Horvàth mentioned. But if someone has to commute more than three hours to work each day, the employer must offer free accommodation for the workers.

The jobs are fixed-term, unskilled, and mostly through public employers that must pay more than what the person would receive on welfare. No one’s forced to do these public works, he said.

Canada wades in 

While Hungarians argue about whether the situation for Roma is getting better or worse in Hungary, Canada is also trying to assess the situation. The Toronto Sun reported in October that up to 50 Hungarian Roma per day were filing refugee claims at Toronto’s Pearson airport. A record 110 claimants arrived in one night that month.

That surge prompted an uptick in Canadian government interest in Hungary’s Roma, said Mr. Király, although the two countries have been in regular contact over the refugee issue since the influx began.

Canada’s ambassador to Hungary, Tamara Guttman, took part in a Canadian government fact-finding mission, and has in the past few weeks been travelling around the countryside to places with large Roma populations.

She spoke with government ministries in charge of social inclusion, the foreign ministry, and the ministry of interior, said Mr. Király.

“The government of Canada is concerned about the rising number of refugee claims from Hungary, the vast majority of which are unfounded,” wrote Citizenship and Immigration Canada spokesperson Nancy Caron in an email to Embassy in August.

There has been constant speculation since Hungary topped the list of refugee claimant source countries that Canada would slap visa requirements back on Hungarians. Canada’s typical response has been that it’s monitoring the situation.

Refugee reform legislation set to come into force in June 2012 will allow the government to pen what it calls a designated countries of origin list, which is essentially a list of countries that don’t normally produce refugees and have a strong human rights record. Asylum seekers from those countries would be fast- tracked through the process.

“We are fairly confident that if a designated countries of origin list will be applied in a new system, that Hungary will be on that,” said Mr. Király.

The government has said it’s too soon to know if any countries will be designated when the act comes into force.

Robert Austin, a senior lecturer at the Munk School’s Centre for European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies and co-ordinator of the Hungarian Studies Program, which invited Mr. Horvàth to speak, said such fact-finding missions in areas where the Roma are facing the biggest challenges are important. He suggested non-partisan, non-government third-party experts should conduct them.

Mr. Austin said that the reasons why Hungarian Roma are seeking refugee status in Canada are not black and white.

“I don’t think everyone here is a refugee, and I don’t think everyone here is economic,” he said.
“People construe it as if either the Hungarians are bad and the Roma are good, or the Roma are bad and the Hungarians are good. But the situation is way more complicated than that.”

kshane@embassymag.ca

Improving Canada's immigration system


As the federal government set about retooling the country's immigration system this fall, it identified two important goals.
It wants, first, to admit a larger number of skilled workers, and second, to whittle down the seven-year backlog in its family-reunification program. This week, it added a third objective: protecting live-in caregivers from possible exploitation by the families they live with.
In a surprise move, the government announced that the waiting period for live-in caregivers to apply for an open work permit will now be shorter by 18 months. Open work permits allow caregivers to look for another job, in any field, once their two-year live-incaregiver contract is complete.
This is a timely and sensible change. The Live-In Caregiver Program has proven to be a resounding success as Canadian families struggle to find care for children and elderly parents. Parents who can't find child care can't work. The same is true of adult children with aging parents in need of care. Here in Quebec, we've read too many exposés of old age homes where the elderly are underfed and poorly cared for to want to depend exclusively on institutional care.
As welcome as this additional protection for live-in caregivers is, however, there are legitimate fears that this new third objective could leave Canada with a caregiver shortage - a concern given our rapidly aging population. Earlier this fall, the government said it would begin admitting no more than 8,000 to 9,000 live-in caregivers a year, down from the current 10,500 to 12,500. It would have been a good idea for the government to keep the numbers at their current level, at least for now, until we see the effects of open-work-permit liberalization. It may be we will need to increase the numbers in the future.
It bears remembering that when we talk about Canada being a country built on immigration, the builders have always included domestic workers. A century ago, Canada took in people willing to work as farmers, lumberjacks, railway builders, store-owners - but also people who worked in private homes.
This is not to say skilled workers should not be the cornerstone of the country's immigration program. They remain a good bet in terms of immigrants' ability to settle in and start contributing. Government research shows that skilled workers fare well, earning on average $79,200 three years after arriving. Last year, Canada granted 280,681 people permanent-resident status, of whom 67 per cent, or 188,056, were skilled workers and entrepreneurs.
In his enthusiasm for the skilled-worker and entrepreneur categories, Immigration Minister Jason Kenney said he intends to cut back on the number of people Canada lets in through the family-reunification program. He is right to be embarrassed by the sevenyear waiting list in that program, with a backlog running into the hundreds of thousands. This leaves people waiting interminably in the often unrealistic hope of moving permanently to Canada.
In addition, Canadian taxpayers may not be convinced that opening the doors to the elderly parents or even grandparents of immigrants is a good investment. Elderly people who have not contributed to the country's health or social services will, if they are admitted, be able to draw on these services in the final years of their lives, possibly even competing with people who have paid for them.
But there are other choices when it comes to family reunification. Longer visitors' visas - five to 10 years in length and requiring the family to provide health insurance and social care - would leave families and their aged relatives with reasonable options and answer taxpayers' concerns. Currently the only options are a short visit or permanent residency.
In the global competition for top-level talent, being able to bring along families can prove a deciding factor for potential immigrants. And those families tend to have the same drive and energy that characterizes the main breadwinner. Canada did not get to be an economic powerhouse on the strength of its relatively small population. It has succeeded because it let in people who wanted to make a better life for themselves and their children - all kinds of people, the live-in caregiver and the telecommunications engineer alike.


Read more: http://www.montrealgazette.com/life/Improving+Canada+immigration+system/5875597/story.html#ixzz1gzK2AR84

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