The door to Canada will soon be shut for them with the Conservative government’s recent announcement it plans to return all skilled worker applications received before 2008 and wipe out the lengthy backlog. “It is absolutely unfair,” said Songqiao’s mother Yan Xu, a high school English teacher in Suzhou, China. “What we lost is not only money, but our youth, our life and our dreams.”
The applicants, many from China, India and the Philippines, wonder why those who patiently followed the rules and queued up for their rightful turn to come to Canada are now being unfairly punished. Ottawa says they can re-apply under the new skilled immigration program implemented after Feb. 27, 2008, where newregulations limit applications to a small number of occupations in need of highly skilled labour.
But the new qualifying job fields are so narrowly defined that many affected applicants, like Xu, will automatically be shut out.
“First-come-first-served is a universal value,” another frustrated applicant who has been waiting in the backlog since 2007.
“The Canadian government let latecomers jump the queue and told the applicants in the backlog to wait for further processing, and finally slashed all of us without mercy,” said Li, who has a master’s degree in packaging technology. “What the Canadian government has done is draconian.”
A demonstration is planned next week in front of the Consulate General of Canada in Hong Kong, with applicants from other regions expected to follow suit. Since Ottawa’s plan was revealed, immigration lawyers and consultants have been frantically answering calls from disillusioned clients overseas. TheCanadian Bar Association has struck a subcommittee to examine the proposed changes and investigate whether the government has the legal authority to stop processing the applications and have them refunded and returned.
“People have been calling, distraught. They just cannot believe it,” said Toronto immigration lawyer Mario Bellissimo, who chairs the subcommittee. “This is a wrong message to be sent by a government purported not to reward queue-jumpers.” The plan has also created havoc for some lawyers with clients looking for a refund of the thousands of dollars in consulting fees, he added. But Immigration Minister Jason Kenney said the move, while understandably unpopular, is necessary.
“I can understand their frustration and I regret the fact that they waited patiently in the queue only to find out that we’re returning their applications,” Kenney told the Star. “If we don’t decisively deal with the old backlog, we’ll be carrying it well into the future. With this reimbursement of fees, we will be able to get to what we call ‘working inventory’ or a ‘just-in-time’ system by the first quarter of 2014.”
Regrets are not enough for affected applicants, however, many of whom put their lives on hold and worked around their immigration plans.
No comments:
Post a Comment