Conservatives mull changes to citizenship rules for babies born on Canadian soil

It's one of the oldest immigration tricks in the book: get pregnant, fly to another country, have your baby, and voila - you've got immigrant ties to said country.

It even happens in Canada.

According to the Toronto Sun, Ottawa has discovered a number of unscrupulousimmigration consultants in Hong Kong, who are coaching wealthy Chinese mainlanders about how to keep their pregnancies hidden while entering Canada on student or visitor visas.

"Avoid any baby or maternity items in luggage, wear dark clothing going through customs to look slimmer, and arrive in Canada no later than in the seventh month of pregnancy are among the tips given," notes the article.

Once here, the women go into hiding until they are due to give birth and then go to a hospital to deliver the baby. And, because all babies born in Canada are considered citizens, they could return later in life as a student, for example, and sponsor their parents under family reunification.

Immigration minister Jason Kenney admits his department isn't sure how widespread the problem is but is considering citizenship law changes to prevent so-called anchor babies from automatically becoming citizens.

"We don't want people to get the idea that citizenship is a way to get a passport of convenience, that Canada is a country to be exploited," he told the Sun.

Toronto based immigration attorney Michael Niren says he doesn't think anchor babies are a "growing problem" and that changing the citizenship rules would be like "throwing the baby out with the bath water."

"Kenney is on a mission to clean up the immigration system from Refugee cases to Citizenship claims. Yes there are many broken aspects of our immigration system but I think he is going way to far here," Niren told Yahoo! Canada News.

"The solution is not to terminate this method for citizenship all together.  Free societies like Canada have always granted citizenship to those born on their soil. This, in my view, should be a right not a privilege.

"[Instead of changing the law,] I think more careful screening of applicants to Canada should be conducted. In some cases, medicals are required which would reveal pregnancies.  Sometimes the government gets ahead of itself and forgets that we are still a democracy."

(CP Photo)

Pagination

Canadians to ease rules allowing Americans entry

• rticle by: DOUG SMITH , Star Tribune 
• Updated: February 25, 2012 - 4:02 PM

Past convictions for certain offenses, such as drunken driving, will no longer be a stumbling block.

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After years of turning back Americans with drunken-driving and other misdemeanor convictions, Canadian border officials are about to relax their entry restrictions.

The move, which begins March 1, should prevent many hunters, anglers and other tourists heading to Canada from being rejected at the border when officials discover a single DWI or other misdemeanor on their records. Thousands of Americans, including many Minnesotans, have been snared by the increase in border security in recent years.

But the changes won't apply to those with multiple convictions or more serious offenses.

As issue for Americans is that drunken driving is a felony in Canada, while a single offense here often is a misdemeanor.

Canadian tourism industry officials say the tightened border restrictions have resulted in thousands of American customers being turned away at the border, resulting in the loss of millions of dollars in revenue.

"We've had hundreds of customers turned around," said Gene Halley, who runs Halley's Camps, a fishing lodge-outpost business in the Kenora, Ontario, area. "The recession hasn't hurt as much as the border crossing issue."

Often if one member of a group gets rejected at the border because of an old criminal offense, the entire group calls off the trip.

"We call them $6,000 vehicles -- if one gets turned around, the whole group goes home,'' said Mike Loewen, executive director of a regional tourist council that represents more than 200 resorts, lodges and outfitters in northwestern Ontario, a prime destination for Minnesota anglers.

"The restrictions have cost millions of dollars just in northwestern Ontario over the years," said Loewen. "People are being turned away who shouldn't be. We're not saying let criminals in, but someone who made a minor indiscretion years ago shouldn't be prevented from coming here to fish."

It was the Canadian tourism industry's continued pressure on their government that led Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC) to develop the new policy, which begins Thursday. Under it, people with one minor conviction can get a free Temporary Resident Permit (TRP) to enter Canada. Previously, obtaining that permit was a lengthy, costly process.

Americans with convictions still would have to go through a "rehabilitation" process to permanently clear their record, but the TRP would prevent their rejection at the border.

A key unanswered question is whether the permit will give an American essentially one "free pass" into Canada, or whether the pass would be good for a certain period of time.

The government has yet to release the details, but a spokesperson said in a written response to questions from the Star Tribune: "It aims to facilitate the entry of those who are currently inadmissible for certain offenses, such as where the individual has served no jail time and there is no evidence of repeat behavior."

The policy apparently will apply to a DWI, if it is the only conviction on a person's record.

Loewen and other Canadian tourism officials were recently briefed about the coming changes. Though they, too, are awaiting details, they are encouraged the changes will benefit them and their American customers.

"We're hoping it's a large step in the right direction," said Halley.

Attorney Satveer Chaudhary of Fridley, a former state senator, works on immigration issues and has helped clients jump through the legal hoops necessary to enter Canada.

"I have dozens of clients either turned away or know they can't get into Canada," he said.

"I have a client who was going with a group of friends to Winnipeg for a softball tournament. He had a prior DWI from years before, and was denied entry. He spent the weekend at Pembina, N.D., waiting for his friends to return to pick him up."

For those with criminal records, the procedures to overcome inadmissibility to Canada are complex. See the Canadian government's explanations at www.startribune.com/a1086.

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Immigration distribution in Canada is rapidly changing

David Campbell – A blog about economic development in Atlantic 

It is pretty impressive the change in the destination of immigrants in the past few years.  From 1991 to 2006, Ontario attracted 54.5 percent of all immigrants into Canada (using Census data). In the  most recent year that is down to 40.5 percent.  BC is down a bit but the rest of the country is up.

Distribution of Immigrants into Canada by Province – Total from 1991 to 2006

Annual Immigration into Canada – per 1,000 population 1972-2011

Distribution of Immigrants into Canada by Province – 2011

Growth Rate of Annual Immigrants 2006 to 2011 – By Province

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Sources:
Statistics Canada. Table 051-0004 – Components of population growth, Canada, provinces and territories, annual (persons)
Statistics Canada, 2006 Census of Population.
Statistics Canada. Table 051-0004 – Components of population growth, Canada, provinces and territories, annual (persons)

Canada's pattern of immigration spreads east and west

DAVID CAMPBELL

Globe and Mail Blog

A metal fabrication business in northern New Brunswick is bringing in workers from Eastern Europe to assemble heating and ventilation systems. A food manufacturing company in a small rural community in the province has been attracting Romanians to work at its plant since the mid-2000s. A national coffee shop chain is recruiting for bilingual (French and English) workers for its stores in the Moncton region.

Immigration into Canada is nothing new. There are now more than seven million first generation immigrants in the country and some four million of them have come to Canada in the past 20 years.

What is rapidly changing is the distribution of new immigrants within Canada.

From 1991 to 2006, Ontario attracted 54.5 per cent of the immigrant population (using Census data for those years). During that same period, the Maritime provinces attracted less than 1 per cent of immigrants, even though the region’s population was more than 5.5 per cent of the Canadian total. Saskatchewan only attracted 0.6 per cent of the country’s immigrants over the 15 year period.

The pattern of immigration in recent years has been changing and not only towards western Canada. In 2011, 2.7 per cent of all immigrants settled in the Maritime provinces and a full 2.9 per cent settled in Saskatchewan.

From 2006 to 2011, the number of immigrants to Prince Edward Island has risen sixfold. While this growth is from a small base, it still means that the Island is attracting more than twice as many immigrants (1 per cent of total immigrants) compared to its share of the total population (0.4 per cent).

New Brunswick has witnessed a 42 per cent increase in immigrants over the past five years and Nova Scotia has also been attracting significantly more immigrants compared to a decade ago.

In many ways this spike in immigration into parts of the country other than Ontario, Quebec and British Columbia was inevitable. Out-migration of young people from the Maritimes for decades to the rest of Canada and beyond coupled with low levels of immigration since the early 1970s has turned what was once the youngest region in Canada (by median age) into the oldest -- by a fairly wide margin.

This is the reason why a place like New Brunswick -- with no new employment growth since 2007 -- can now still be attracting four times as many immigrants each year compared to the 1990s. Immigrant workers are needed to replace retiring workers.

This is different than places like Saskatchewan and Alberta, which are attracting record levels of immigrants to fuel a rapidly expanding work force.

Immigration into the Maritimes also raises another tricky challenge. For decades, thousands of people in the region cobbled together enough hours to become eligible for Employment Insurance because there were not enough year-round jobs to go around. Now employers are bringing in immigrant workers because they can’t find local people that are willing to work all year. The locals complain that wage levels on offer are not high enough to justify the move from seasonal work supplemented by EI to full-year work.

There isn’t much statistical data around to prove this trend but the anecdotal evidence is rising. Using immigrant workers to ignore a structural labour market problem is not a particularly positive development.

It is likely the Maritimes and other non-traditional destinations for immigrants into Canada will need to attract far more in the coming years -- just to replace retiring workers. This broader distribution of new immigrants across Canada can only strengthen the cultural fabric of the country.

Visit my blog for a series of tables showing the changing pattern of immigration into Canada in recent years.

David Campbell is an economic development consultant and columnist based in Moncton, New Brunswick. He also authors a daily blog on economic issues in Atlantic Canada which can be found atwww.davidwcampbell.com.

Jason Kenney: smart, competent and hard to trust

Either Immigration Minister Jason Kenney misled the public two years ago or he’s misleading us now.

Whichever it is, he has a credibility problem and we have a trust problem.

In 2010, he introduced the Balanced Refugee Reform Act after extensive consultations with refugee groups, human rights activists and immigration lawyers, and fruitful negotiations with the opposition parties. The legislation streamlined the refugee system without sacrificing Canada’s tradition of fairness. It was widely praised by his colleagues and critics.

Kenney hailed the New Democrats and Bloc Québécois for proposing affordable safeguards for rejected refugee claimants. “We found very reasonable compromises,” he said, calling it a “win-win” example of parliamentary collaboration.

Last week, he tabled a new version of the bill, the Protecting Canada’s Immigration System Act. The safeguards were gone. The balance had disappeared.

“Canada’s asylum system is broken” he said, defending his new bill. “Too many tax dollars are spent on people who do not need our protection.”

Under his latest plan, Kenney told Parliament, refugee claimants from countries he considered safe would be fast-tracked. They’d get a decision within 45 days. If it was negative, they’d be removed from the country immediately, even if they sought a judicial review by the Federal Court. (Under the current process, with its multiple court appeals, it takes 1,038 days. Under the Balanced Refugee Reform Act, slated to take effect in June, it would have included one appeal and taken 171 days.)

“We need to send a message to those who would abuse Canada’s generous asylum that if you are not in need of protection, you will be sent home,” he explained.

It is as if his previous attempt to fix the problem had never happened.

How can the minister responsible for the fate of 12,500 refugees discard a piece of legislation he extolled 20 months ago? How can he dump a solution the government never tested?

The practical answer is easy: Kenney belongs to a majority government now. He does not have to accommodate the views of the opposition parties or anyone else.

But his behaviour raises bigger questions:

 • How much confidence can Canadians have in a minister who changes his position with the political winds?

 • How willing are we to see Canada’s immigration system used to crack down on unwanted foreigners? It’s not just refugee claimants. Kenney and Public Safety Minister Vic Toews are conducting a manhunt for foreign war criminals living in Canada. Kenney is revoking the citizenship of new Canadians accused of making false statements to immigration officials. And Canada now detains all refugee claimants suspected of links to human smugglers. These measures are expensive. They divert resources from the department’s primary job: dealing with people who have applied to live in Canada.

 • How do we feel about compelling Muslim women to lift their niqabs as a condition of Canadian citizenship?

 • How comfortable are we with the wider changes Kenney is making to Canada’s immigration system? So far, the minister has increased the intake of foreign temporary workers. He has reduced the number of spots allotted to parents and grandparents of new Canadians. And he has set a cap on the number of economic immigrants admitted each year, barring those without either a job offer or skills Canada needs.

Through both words and actions, Kenney is transforming the face Canada presents to the world.

The sad thing is that he is the most competent immigration minister the country has had in 20 years. The 43-year old Calgarian is knowledgeable, hard-working and he actually wants the job, unlike most politicians. He has implemented some long overdue reforms. And he has made an extraordinary effort to reach out to a number of ethnic communities.

But skill and dedication can be used to build or tear down. Kenney’s recent actions have divided the nation and diminished Canada’s reputation for tolerance and compassion.

Carol Goar’s column appears Monday, Wednesday and Friday.