Stewart Sharma Harsanyi Immigration Law Firm Blog

Hitting the Reset Button on the Harper Decade

The Liberal Government continues to hit the reset button on the Harper DecadeTM. Mohamad Hashem of Al Jazeera has written about the "mixed reaction" to the announcement by Minister McCallum to turn back the clock to the time before Harper ("TBH") and canvassed the revocation of the revocation clauses as well as the re-instatement of the pre-PR credit. In my mind, the revocation clauses were political in nature and not consequential: Others, such as Raj Sharma, a Canadian immigration lawyer, describe the CPC's position as "dog-whistle politics" "They're signaling to their base that they they're tough on [terrorism]. That was pandering to the gallery, done for political purposes," he told Al Jazeera. The other, and there's no other way to characterize it, but dumb change contained within C24 was eliminating the pre-PR credit: Other changes proposed by the current government include allowing citizenship applicants to count up to a year's worth of the days they spend in Canada as non-permanent-residents (PR). This will affect people like international students who, under Bill C-24, are not allowed to count their non-PR days in Canada. "You've gotten a degree here - that's four years," Sharma told Al Jazeera. "After that you get an... Read more →

Blog Posting - Temporary Foreign Worker Program Review Likely

As indicated in the linked article, it appears the new Liberal Government will be undertaking another review of the Temporary Foreign Worker Program: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/temporary-foreign-workers-program-faces-federal-review/article28792323/ While the program appears to suggest that the review is linked to Atlantic Canadian employers need for more seasonal foreign workers, it should be noted that the last time a review was undertaken there was a moratorium imposed on the issuance of LMOs (now LMIAs). Any such moratorium linked to a further review could be catastrophic to both employers and foreign workers whose work permits are expiring. It is also difficult to discern from the article what the focus of the review would be, beyond the issues raised in Atlantic Canada. As previously mentioned on this blog, the issuance of LMIAs and work permits based on LMIAs is, right now, the best guarantee for selection for permanent residents through the Express Entry system. Any moratorium or review could result in lower scores in the pool of Applicants under Express Entry. If this occurs, the government needs to either lower the scores for selection or amend the selection criteria to place more value on work experience, education, age, adaptability rather than the current system which is weighted... Read more →

The Case for and Against Immigration

Is immigration good or bad? On one side, Grubel (et al) argue that the benefits of immigration are dwarfed by the financial costs. ...the welfare state, which is characterized by progressive income taxes and the universality of access to social services. It is well documented that the average incomes of immigrants are well below the average of the native population. Immigrants, therefore, pay less taxes than everyone else. At the same time, immigrants are entitled to virtually all the benefits provided by the welfare state, such as free education, health care and other benefits. The same authors that argue that immigrants impose financial burdens on the receiving state are the same ones that argue that Canada should close its doors to immigrants and refugees. The economic and social costs just discussed do not make the case against all immigration but make the case for the selection of immigrants with prospects for economic success that are high enough to eliminate the fiscal burden and the admission of immigrants in numbers small enough to prevent the risk of creating the substantial redistribution of income, the establishment of ethnic enclaves, the threat of jihadist terror and the problems associated with substantial and rapid... Read more →

What's in a name? A Rose by any Other Name May Not Smell as Sweet.

What's in a name? that which we call a rose By any other name would smell as sweet; Romeo and Juliet Act II, Scene II Two economics professors found that women lawyers with traditionally masculine names (or gender ambiguous names) are far more likely to be come judges than their traditionally named compatriots. Excerpts from the study are below: Despite the fact that women made up half of the students graduating from law school in the past 15 years, the legal profession remains a male-dominated world. Consequentially, one would suspect that having a male persona or male moniker might still be advantageous to a career in law. We dub this the Portia hypothesis: females with masculine names are more successful in legal careers than females with feminine names. The New Yorker explains the Power of Names. ...and lawyers in American firms with fluent names rise up the legal hierarchy to partnership more quickly than their non-fluently named colleagues. (The result persisted even when we focussed on Anglo-American names, so it doesn’t simply boil down to xenophobic prejudice.) Or, the Atlantic takes on Who Wins in the Name Game: ...Not being able to pronounce a name spells a death sentence for... Read more →