Calgary Immigration Lawyers Bjorn Harsanyi and Raj Sharma have a year end (2013) discussion on developments in Immigration. The principals of Stewart Sharma Harsanyi discuss topics such as the dedicated funding committed to investigate cessate and vacate refugee/protected persons; marriage fraud investigations; 'Deporting Foreign Criminals Faster' Act; the removal of discretion from the immigration system and decision makers; and the citizenship backlog of over 300,000 individuals waiting patiently while a few dozen are being investigated for fraud.
It's been a very interesting year. Every day you have to check the news to see 'what else has gone wrong'. Canada's changed from a welcoming nation for immigrants to one that is very selective of the immigrants that we do take and has lowered the bar to exclude individuals from the country. The denial of health coverage to refugee claimants (prior to the determination of that claim) was a moral failing for the country and a black eye to our reputation. Mean spirited and narrow minded, some of these decisions are driven by ideology.
We're looking forward to continuing our advocacy for and on behalf of all of our clients.
Transcript
Raj Sharma: It's December 2013. It's been an eventful couple of years.
Bjorn Harsanyi: That it has.
Raj Sharma: I thought it would be a good idea if we sat down and just chatted about what's occurred in the last year or so. Really, there's been sea of change in immigration. ..Jason Kennedy, the most activist Minister of Citizenship and Immigration is now no longer nominally the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration.
Bjorn Harsanyi: Who is the Minister of Immigration now? I don't even know. Who is it?
Raj Sharma: It's Chris Alexander.
Bjorn Harsanyi: I wasn't sure.
Raj Sharma: I think it's still Jason Kennedy.
Bjorn Harsanyi: He still seems to be talking about it. He's still going to many events.
Raj Sharma: He's still the Minister of Multiculturalism. That allows him access to many of the same groups.
Bjorn Harsanyi: One might wonder if he's thinking of being Prime Minister one day, the way he acts.
Raj Sharma: I don't think there's ..doubt about that.
Bjorn Harsanyi: Recently I had a very interesting conversation with a prominent lawyer out in Vancouver. There were new provisions, as you know, there are new provisions in IRPA about cessating, or taking away people's permanent resident status and the refugee-protected people in Canada, if the re-avail themselves. As we know, we know they've actually not done this to anyone. You might remember the intent of it was just to take away the status for individuals who were, right after their refugee claim, maybe went straight back, or were obvious fraudsters. The example I just heard, what he advised me, they now have dedicated funding to different offices across the country to commence these cessates and see how far they can go.
The example I heard was of a woman from Mexico fourteen years ago who got her refugee status, is a permanent resident, applied for citizenship in 2010 with a teenaged child who returned to her country a number of years ago just shortly, and now they're seeking to cessate her refugee and take away her permanent residence status. There'll be no H&C, no PRA, no appeal.
Raj Sharma: I think what I find not quite amusing, because this is mean-spirited, is that you win your refugee claim, and you think you're clear. You've got permanent residence status based on that protected person status, and then you're in this country for ten years. A decade and a half you're in this country. All of the sudden the long arm of Canada's Immigration is going to reach back, and it's going to strip you of your status in Canada. It doesn't matter how many years you've been in this country, it doesn't matter how much taxes you've paid in this country, it doesn't matter that you have kids in this country, it doesn't matter that you have a house in this country, it doesn't matter that your ties are all to this country. Because you visited the country against that you've made a refugee claim, they're entitled to bring this action up.
Bjorn Harsanyi: It reminds me, I saw a show where this little child is playing in the grass and on the beach. Everything seems safe and fun, and the world is good. A zombie comes out of the ground and gets her when you least expect it.
Raj Sharma: Your point is that zombie is Jason Kennedy.
Bjorn Harsanyi: And Immigration. It's been a very interesting year. I think we've seen the most mean-spirited intent that I've ever seen in Immigration with the changes in the legislation.
Raj Sharma: There's no more benefit of the doubt. The other thing is that we know for a fact so much of this is driven by budgets. We know that this is a make-work project. There's no possible reason to cessate individuals that have been in this country for ten years. This is really, you're cutting your nose to spite your face. You're removing tax-paying, contributing Canadians.
Bjorn Harsanyi: It's despicable, and it's shameful. I think if the vast majority of people actually knew.
Raj Sharma: It's a little bit inside baseball, so there's not going to be any news stories about this.
Bjorn Harsanyi: They're going to be too busy talking about their most wanted list.
Raj Sharma: What I find funny is that marriage fraud. Remember marriage fraud, Jason Kennedy went up and down turning red, that vein popping in his forehead, saying, "We're going to take action against marriage fraud. All these guys that have committed marriage fraud on Canadian sponsors, and we're going to make sure that we deport these scofflaws." What have we got? No real dedicated funding's there, and you've got maximum of five, seven officers in charge of these files all across Canada. This is another example of, we're going to play to the gallery, and we're going to make a lot of noise. We're going to hit the news, and then we're not going to actually do anything effective against it.
Bjorn Harsanyi: It's ironic. They always go for the weakest individuals.
Raj Sharma: The low-hanging fruit.
Bjorn Harsanyi: Low-hanging fruit, and typically speaking that's been what we've seen for the last year, year and a half, or whenever a lot of these changes have been implemented. That being said, I have faith that we're still hanging in there for our clients, people are still getting status.
Raj Sharma: It's tough. Every day you've got to check the news for what else could go wrong. For example, you get sponsored to Canada. You can't sponsor yourself a spouse for five years after your own landing, no exceptions. Let's say you get sponsored to Canada, and let's say your spouse dies. You go back to India, or China, or wherever else, and you get remarried. You want to sponsor your new spouse to Canada. You can't do it for five years. This government doesn't like discretion. They don't like giving discretion to officers. Of course, use some discretion sometimes, you should waive that requirement. What if the sponsoring spouse was abusive? What if the sponsoring spouse is dead?
Bjorn Harsanyi: What I find funny about this when I go to Immigration and do my detention reviews or whatever, have all these pictures. You ever see the pictures they have up on the wall when you go to Immigration at the check-in counter. Come to Canada for $5, and here's a ticket to come to Canada and get a little parcel of land. That's how easy it was, and how welcoming it was. If you worked hard and came here, and you had a ticket you could make a future for yourself. It was like that until not very long ago. All of the sudden, Canada's become Lichtenstein where we have this Tea Party government. Don't kid yourselves, that's exactly what they are. These are Tea Party Republicans in Canada who run this country, who want to create this homogeneous English-only society of white doctors, or whatever it is they want. It's not the society that this country's built on, it's not what the immigrant population has been, and it's not how this country has grown. I think it's shameful what they're doing.
Raj Sharma: There's been a number of exclusionary policies. When you commented about those posters in room 170 of Harry Hayes, remember 1910, 1912, we had four hundred thousand people come from Europe. In that same year, Komagata Maru, three hundred and thirty brown guys showed up, and there was street ..protests. They used the force of exclusionary laws based on where a person's from to exclude those three hundred guys from Canada, but allowed the four hundred thousand from Europe into Canada.
You see the same exclusionary policies now. For example, the so-called safe countries, or the designated countries of origin, and you do a lot of refugee cases. A Roma from Hungary comes to Canada, no appeal for a negative refugee decision, no healthcare, no work permit for six months, but a Roma from Romania can come to Canada. He gets healthcare coverage, he gets a work permit, he gets an appeal to the rep. That is a pretty arbitrary distinction, and it's based only on the country of origin. I think that that's exclusionary.
Bjorn Harsanyi: Absolutely.
Raj Sharma: One good development this holiday season is that Ontario's decided to step in and cover the gap for refugee healthcare.
Bjorn Harsanyi: Kudos to Ontario for that. Good on that.
Raj Sharma: Ontario, Saskatchewan, Quebec, for example. That was really a moral failure by our federal government, that we're going to deny healthcare coverage to individuals that might very well become permanent residents and citizens of Canada. What a welcome to this country. Before your claim is even decided, whether you have a good refugee claim or a bad refugee claim, we're just going to deny you and your children healthcare coverage.
Bjorn Harsanyi: It was really a black eye for the country. It was a sad day, in my opinion. Canada, contrary to what anyone may think, and I stand by this, we wear blue hats. I'm not trying to diss other countries that do some heavy lifting, and do some of the hard jobs in this world. We're a humanitarian country first and foremost. We should never deviate from those principles. We're a multicultural country of all races, education levels, languages.
Raj Sharma: We're inclusive, and not exclusive. Again, what I find troublesome is that, let's say you have a refugee claim. You make a refugee claim in Canada. You're going to have a hearing within a couple of months. If you're found not to be a refugee, you've got limited recourses, and so you'll be removed from Canada. If you get accepted, of course you become a permanent resident in due course. What's the harm in providing healthcare coverage for those three or four months? It's just, again, a mean-spirited and narrow-minded sort of vision. You know what it is? I'll tell you one thing. This is not about saving dollars and cents. Absolutely not. This is a signal by Jason Kennedy to everyone in the world saying, "You want to make a refugee claim in Canada, think twice." It's a economic decision.
Bjorn Harsanyi: He decided to create a chilling effect. I've stood by this, and I stand by this principle, it's a principle of criminal defense work. I'd rather let nine fraudulent refugee claims get accepted than send one person back to die. You have principles like this, what happens is the good ones get thrown out, and they don't come. Is it really worth it? That someone who, in many cases, and even if they're not the most legitimate of claims, many people are just desperate. They want a better life for themselves, they want a better life for their children.
Raj Sharma: This is politics. He's playing to the gallery, and he's playing to a particular constituency that he has.
Bjorn Harsanyi: Not to mention we're now deporting/exiling individuals who have six-month jail sentences.
Raj Sharma: I hate the title of this legislation, Deporting Foreign Criminals Faster Act. That's got to be the worst legislative title of all time.
Bjorn Harsanyi: Yes, I think it's right up there.
Raj Sharma: When we parse it out, deporting foreign criminals. When we say foreign criminals, do Canadians know that we're talking about permanent residents that might be in Canada for twenty, thirty, forty years?
Bjorn Harsanyi: Or they were here when they were one year old. Maybe people who've been here since they were six months old. One day old. They could be deported when they're fifty years old, and they have grandkids. It's perfectly within the purview of the legislation. It's absurd.
Raj Sharma: The legislation allows you to be deported, irrespective of ...
Bjorn Harsanyi: Your humanitarian and personal circumstances.
Raj Sharma: Not even that, irrespective of the nature of the crime. It could be a white-collar crime, or it could be a violent crime. It could be fraud, or an economic crime, or it could be a crime based on an addiction. Or it could be something that's a violent crime and reprehensible.
Bjorn Harsanyi: We all understand there's certain crimes that are reprehensible, rape, what have you.
Raj Sharma: And warrants deportation.
Bjorn Harsanyi: I think at the same time, let's not all be too Pollyanna and live in our glass houses. How many of us haven't made mistakes, how many of us haven't made bad judgment calls, or made mistakes in our lives, and we're really going to be so judgmental on people. We're going to ruin their lives because they made one mistake?
Raj Sharma: The reality is, we're going to see deportations based on early guilty pleas for something as minor as conviction for fraud for passing a bad check.
Bjorn Harsanyi: Or a second impaired driving charge, who knows. It could be the most innocuous of offenses. I mistakenly had a gun, or pot. I grew pot. I'm nineteen years old, twenty years old. I watered pot plants when I was nineteen years old. I now could be deported for that, even though I just made a mistake as a kid.
Raj Sharma: Again, this is another example of the Conservatives taking discretion out of the hands of decision-makers. They've done that for judges. We've seen judges in Ontario rebelling against the imposition of these fines that the Conservative government has done.
Bjorn Harsanyi: Because they know better.
Raj Sharma: Than a trained specialist in adjudication. Before, the IAD had discretion. If you were convicted and sentenced to two years less a day, the IAD could balance all of these factors. Now it doesn't matter. You've got a thumb on the scale, the Conservative's thumb on the scale, which is you get sentenced to six months or more. By the way, conditional in the community doesn't matter. Jail or conditional sentence, you're out.
Bjorn Harsanyi: I'm very liberal in many ways, but I'm conservative in some ways as well. Socially-speaking, this isn't who we are. I think if the vast majority of Canadians really understood. It got past the rhetoric, it got past the soundbites, and really understood the agenda of this government and what they were doing to people's families, and what they were doing to people's lives, what they're doing to people who aren't bad people, people who are good people, they would be horrified.
Raj Sharma: The myth of efficient management, let's put that aside. You have put the citizenship applications of three hundred fifty thousand people on hold, and what has that resulted in? Nineteen cases of immigration or citizenship fraud. Talk about a hammer to kill a mosquito. We have all these people who have lived in Canada, was played by the rules, and all they want is Canadian citizenship for that passport and so they can vote. Those guys are being denied citizenship based on an inexplicable decision, and a complete waste of resources. Much like the cessation that we talked about.
Bjorn Harsanyi: Another year coming to an end, 2013.
Raj Sharma: Another year is done. More changes are in the offing, undoubtedly. That's how Immigration is going to be.
Bjorn Harsanyi: We'll see how some of this legislation really plays out next year, it's going to be a very interesting year to come. I know one thing. They'll never break my back.
Raj Sharma: We're looking forward to the continued fight for our clients, and on behalf of our clients.
Bjorn Harsanyi: Absolutely, one hundred percent. It'll be a good year.
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