Summer travels

This mind is now on our regular summer hiatus - travel and vacations call! Check back soon for news and commentary - and enjoy the nice weather too!

CIC News - Canadian Citizenship Applicants Face Long Delays, Reforms Underway

According to recent statistics, individuals who are eligible for Canadian citizenship today may not become citizens in time to vote in the 2015 federal election. Delays in application processing, which range from 21 to 29 months, have left over 24,000 individuals waiting to take the final step in their journey to becoming Canadian.

Since 2006, Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC) says that an increase in Canadian permanent residents has led to a 30% increase in demand for Canadian citizenship. Without sufficient resources to process this growing demand, significant backlogs have formed. While the government is taking steps to ensure that processing times are reduced, change has been slow for those already waiting in the queue.

Sound familiar? Increased demand, staffing issues, growing backlogs? Minister Kenney and the Harper Government can't say they didn't see this coming.

One of their solutions to the backlog is to make citizenship actually take longer and make it more expensive for permanent residents. The expense and delay are a two-fold tool: proving your fluency in one of Canada's official languages now requires a third-party test (starting at $150.00 CAD if you can't prove your fluency by other means); the delay comes because you have to pass this test before you can apply. Should you fail the citizenship knowledge test, the delay you will experience comes in scheduling a make-up test. Previously, a citizenship judge would determine whether those who did not pass the Canadian knowledge test were still eligible for citizenship. Adding time and expense to any process are sure methods of creating attrition. The Harper Government plays this card well.

Read the article here

Jerk that knee - Harper government passes new regulations on temporary foreign workers

From The Globe and Mail:

Federal officials will have the right to walk into Canadian workplaces without a warrant as part of a tightening of the controversial foreign temporary workers program.

Changes to immigration and refugee protection regulations, published just days ago, give Human Resources and Skills Development Canada officials or Citizenship and Immigration Canada officers the right to walk in on businesses as part of a random audit or because they suspect fraud.

Upon entering a property, officials will have wide powers of investigation. They will be able to “examine anything on the premises,” question employers and staff, request documents, use photocopiers to copy records, and take photographs or make video and audio recordings.

Read all about it here

Frances Wooley - ‘Visible minority:’ A misleading concept that ought to be retired

In Canada, anyone who considers themself neither white nor aboriginal is classified by the government, for a number of purposes, as a visible minority. It is an artificial concept that has become unnecessary and counterproductive.

Ultimately, the dividing line is arbitrary. For example, Arabic people from North Africa and the Middle East are counted as “white” in the U.S. Census. Yet anyone who ticks the Arab box on Canada’s National Household Survey is counted as a visible minority – unless they tick both the white box and the Arab box. Then they’re white.

Read the Globe and Mail column here

MacLeans online - Why the world’s best and brightest struggle to find jobs in Canada

See the feature here

The Globe and Mail - Temporary immigrants mean temporary loyalties

Read Ratana Omidvar's excellent piece on the changing nature of immigration in Canada, from the permanent to the temporary. Her article does a great job of exposing the Harper Government's radical changes to immigration policy, especially in relation to the Family Class and reunification.

Here's a taste:

Impermanence comes at a cost, both for us and those who find themselves in impermanent situations. By focusing on the temporary, we create transience. This discourages temporary residents from integrating into their communities and forming an attachment to Canada. In fact, it encourages the temporary to maintain and develop their loyalties elsewhere. It often separates families, sometimes for years at a time.

For those who eventually come to live in Canada permanently, these interrupted family relations can hinder the adjustment of the children and the family to their new life. And from those who leave, we will bypass the most significant benefits that we currently realize from the second generation, who, studies show, are more likely to attend college or university than their non-immigrant peers and have higher earnings as a result. 

Read the article here

Springtime in Canada

Canada is a big country. And springtime in Canada is as diverse as the country is large. One simple example in today's nationwide weather forecast: In the Yukon, a winter storm warning for snowfall; in the prairies, a rainfall warning; and in the east, high temperatures in the upper 20's, with thunderstorms.

Over the weekend, the Maritimes experienced record snowfall. 

Springtime in Canada.  

The Globe and Mail - More than one-fifth of Canadians are foreign-born: National Household Survey

Sustained levels of immigration over the past two decades have literally changed the face of Canada.

The first report of the 2011 National Household Survey reveals that the percentage of people living in this country who were born someplace else is expanding along with those who consider themselves to be members of a visible minority.

Read the article here

Taking a breather

Hi everyone - just wanted to let you know The Mind is taking a short hiatus in the U.S. for a couple weeks. We'll return with all the usual immigration news, commentary and more once we return. Thanks for your patience - and Go Leafs Go!

South China Morning Post - Chinese numbers in Vancouver, Toronto to double by 2031

The Chinese populations of Vancouver and Toronto are set to double by 2031, helping push whites below 50 per cent of the population in both cities, says a report for Canada's immigration department.

The study, released this week, is titled "A new residential order?". It predicted that the populations in both cities would be more prone to segregate into racial enclaves with time.

Daniel Hiebert, a geographer at the University of British Columbia, concluded his report by saying that the two cities "are likely to have a social geography that is entirely new to Canadian society". He said the degree of racial segregation in both cities would approach that of between blacks and whites in America.

Both cities have a long history of immigrant populations, but it was only in the late 1990s that they developed what Hiebert called "ethnocultural enclaves" and a "new residential order".

Read the article here