Stewart Sharma Harsanyi Immigration Law Firm Blog

Blog Posting - Trudeau's Immigration Policy: The Lobbying and Framing Begins

The linked article sets out preliminary salvoes for the shape and direction of Canada's future immigration policy under our new government: http://news.nationalpost.com/news/canada/trudeau-urged-by-workers-to-drop-stringent-migrant-rules-so-they-arent-trapped-with-one-employer What is noteworthy about this article and these efforts from the political left to shape the contour of permanent residence and the foreign worker program over the coming years. At present, most foreign workers who come to Canada, arrive on employer specific work permits. This restricts them from employment with non listed employers unless, in most cases, the new employer obtains a new labour market impact assessment (LMIA) from Service Canada which can be used by the worker to obtain a new work permit. Businesses tend to prefer employer specific work permits precisely because they gain the stability of the foreign worker working for them for the specified period, usually two years. If these proposed changes were made, foreign workers would be in a position to change employment anytime they chose without the new employer having to go through the recruitment and expense of obtaining an LMIA. Therefore, on some level, these changes would necessitate a radical departure from the existing foreign worker regime. While the intentions of these changes are laudable, in that open work permits would... Read more →

Canadian child denied health care coverage in Alberta

Hanlon's razor: Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity. I'll assume that the decision to refuse an 8 year old health coverage in Alberta is the latter and not the former. This is Canada, we don't visit the sins of the parents on the child. But that is what has happened in a case where my 8 year old client who is entitled to health care coverage is being denied to her birthright. All Canadians should be equal before the law; but Jason Kenney's efforts to deny health care to refugee claimants is the likely source of the denial to this young, blameless, primary school attending girl. I expressed my thoughts this morning on the CBC Eyeopener here in Calgary and I'm hopeful that after this coverage (sunlight is the best disinfectant) and my (abrupt) fax to Alberta Health (Services) will result in a positive resolution to this situation in the coming days. 2015 10 23 Canadian child has health care card revoked - CBCca Calgary Eyeopener Transcript: Speaker 1: Divya Boparai is 8 years old. She was born in Calgary, and she has an Alberta birth certificate, and yet her mother has been told that... Read more →

Blog Posting - Examining the Liberal and NDP Immigration Platforms

The Conservative Party's radical approach to immigration in platform has been outlined extensively on this blog and in the article posted to "The Harper Decade" website here: http://www.theharperdecade.com/blog/2015/4/20/raj-sharma-ram-sankaran The recent revelations of the PMO's interference in the selection of Syrian refugees notwithstanding, there have been no serious policy changes or developments with respect to the immigration portfolio outside of Minister Kenney's statement that, if elected, the Conservatives would work to select more North Korea refugees for resettlement. The Liberals have put forward several policy goals if they are elected. These can be summarized as follows: -They would double the quota for selection for parents and grandparents under Family Class sponsorship; -They would increase the points allotment for foreign applicants with siblings with status in Canada under the Express Entry system; -Restore Federal healthcare coverage to refugees and refugee claimants; -Establish appeal mechanisms for individual claimants from designated countries of origins and have an expert human rights panel determine those same designated countries' -Expand Canada's intake of Syrian refugees to 25,000 through immediate government sponsorship and work with private sponsors to accept even more refugees from Syria -restoring "residency time credit" for international students and other temporary residents to make it... Read more →

Will new Canadians Support Stephen Harper in this Election?

With his victory over the uninspiring and unprepared Michael Ignatieff and the Liberal Party of Canada in 2011 (which was still reeling from the fiasco of the flaccid Dion leadership), the Conservative Party of Canada achieved something that was, in the words of John Ibbitson in his new tome Harper, "unmatched by any other conservative party anywhere in the world. They had become a conservative party that attracted the support of large numbers of immigrants. This was a remarkable, though precarious, achievement. Precarious because to sustain its popularity, the new seemingly natural governing party needed to preserve and deepen that bond, which is no easy feat." On the eve of election 2015, will the CPC succeed in preserving that bond? How important is the immigrant vote anyway? As Ibbitson notes, Canada is so "heavily immigrant that no federal party could hope to come to power without winning a plurality of the immigrant vote." Doug Saunders, who knows what he's talking about in terms of immigrants and Muslims, seems to think that the new Canadians will stay the course for Harper. The nub of his argument? Muslims only make up 3% of the Canadian populace and the HSBC (Hindus Sikhs Buddhists... Read more →

Political chicanery at the cost of vulnerable refugees lives #cdnimm #elxn42

The Globe article of yesterday -- that unbeknownst to Canadians, the Prime Minister's Office suspended and reviewed individual UN referred Syrian refugee claims -- would have sent any government into conniptions, had they were not already prepared for such a story. Now it makes sense why Jason Kenney and Harper kept banging the drum on the red herring of security these last few weeks - they had known, of course, all along that processing had been suspended, files had been vetted, that there was a drop in the number of UN referred resettled files and that this story might come out. But the ongoing narrative of the government on this file simply doesn't make any sense to me. Remember Chris Alexander told Canadians in the aftermath of Alan Kurdi's body washing up on a beach that: a) he couldn't intervene as a Minister [but apparently PMO staffers can] and b) that the Kurdi family were missing the all important UNHCR certificate, which is apparently some kind of gold seal for Canadian resettlement of Group of Five sponsored refugees, but of course, he must have known at that time that the PMO had suspended UN referred refugee processing saying yesterday that... Read more →

Zunera Ishaq 3, the Harper Government 0 #cdnimm #elxn42 #bollywood

So far, it's 3-0 for Zunera Ishaq versus the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration. I would have loved to have watched the proceedings in person (it's unfortunate that they were not broadcast as SCOC proceedings are). Reading between the lines, I sense reluctant Department of Justice lawyers tasked with overcoming a challenge analogous to cleansing the Augean stables. The actual nub of the matter is quite straightforward. The Citizenship Act and the Citizenship Regulations allow the Citizenship Judge great flexibility in accommodating religious sentiment in the oath taking ceremony. Jason Kenney sought to change that by way of fiat -- introducing an Operational Bulletin that clearly restricts the discretion granted by legislation. There is no contest between the two. The latter supersedes, as it must, the former. Also it's important to note that neither the FC or the FCA decision turned on any Charter issues. The government can of course, restrict veiling by promulgating valid Regulations. It chose not to do so, even though this is the only legal course of action available. Instead, it dug in its heels, appealing the Federal Court decision of Justice Boswell (a Harper government appointment and a three decade card carrying Conservative, and if... Read more →

Sponsoring your Partner to Canada

Canadian citizens and permanent residents of this country can sponsor their spouse, common law partner, and/or conjugal partner to Canada. Tens of thousands of spouses and partners immigrate to Canada this way every year. There are two main ways to sponsor your partner. One involves submitting the application from inside Canada. The other involves submitting the application outside Canada. Remember it is not necessary that you submit an inside Canada application if your partner is here. Even if your partner is here you may well be able to submit the application outside Canada and there are many reasons to do so. There are several differences between an inside Canada application and a "traditional" outside Canada application. One of the main differences is if the outside Canada application is refused there is an appeal mechanism. There is no appeal for a refused application from inside Canada. The other consideration that generally rears its head is processing times. Processing times for inside Canada applications have markedly increased in the past 2 years. If your application involves addressing a criminal record or other complications it may be advisable to submit the application outside Canada and retaining the possibility of an appeal. It is... Read more →