Family reunification wait times for immigrants to be cut by half, John McCallum says

'You won't need a PhD in English to understand the forms,' Immigration minister promises

By Kathleen Harris, CBC News Posted: Dec 07, 2016 11:18 AM ET Last Updated: Dec 07, 2016 12:07 PM ET

Immigration Minister John McCallum makes an announcement on family reunification during an event in Brampton, Ont. on Wednesday. (CBC)

Newcomers to Canada will soon have a much shorter wait to reunite with their spouses, partners and children.

Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Minister John McCallum announced today in Brampton, Ont., that the current average two-year processing period will be reduced to 12 months. The new one-year guarantee will apply to applications already in the queue and new applicants.

"This will be of direct benefit to the 64,000 spouses we will admit to Canada in the coming year," he said.

"But it will be of benefit to all Canadians, because I think people are more productive citizens, they do better overall, when they are with their families than when they are isolated from their families. This measure will be positive for the whole country."

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McCallum stressed the accelerated processing time will not mean cutting corners on security or medical screening, and said the same mandatory checks will be place.

"Those will remain intact, and our immigration officers will remain vigilant to detect and impede fraudulent marriages," he said.

Fraudulent marriages can result in the loss of permanent resident status for the sponsored individual or the sponsor.

The expedited processing will be achieved by increasing the number of people processing claims and improving efficiencies in the system. 

Immigration Minister John McCallum announced the government is cutting the wait time for processing family reunification applications by half, from an average of two years to 12 months. (CBC )

The family reunification guide has been revamped from a cumbersome 180 pages to a streamlined 75-page document. The application process will also be "simplified" with plain language.

"You won't need a PhD in English to understand the forms,"  McCallum said.

The new application kits will be in place as of Dec. 15, 2016.

McCallum said he hopes to cut wait times even more in the future, but conceded the Immigration department is a "big ship" that can't be turned "on a dime."

The source:http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/immigration-family-reunification-1.3885129

Comment:

Some families are more respected than others

Today Immigration Minister John McCallum is at Brampton’s Indian Cultural Centre explaining why more families can be united more quickly with their parents, dependant children and grandparents.   

I never understood why the state pretends that it knows best when it comes to selecting which families in Canada should, or shouldn’t be united through immigration.

Of course there have to be rules assuring that Canada’s social safety net is not bankrupted through family class immigration.

But why do we see family reunification in tight little, non-economically viable compartments? We see older people beyond their prime. At best, they can baby sit or drive a cab. At worse, they visit the hospital for a few years. In any event, there is always OAS.   

Why does government not recognize that family reunification based on younger trades workers is a winner for Canada?

We used to have a great “family business” immigration class that sowed the seeds for many of today’s economic giants. The program died because the bureaucracy couldn’t figure out how to eliminate exploitation of the program.

Unfortunately, all overseas selection immigration programs eventually wither away because officials can’t deal with the bad apples that pollute the barrel. It’s too bad that programs are set up to work in a perfect world where unproven overseas applicants are assumed to be dealing in good faith. .

Rather than admit that the 40 year old family and economic immigration “overseas selection” models have failed, the state keeps inventing new programs and new announcements, including today’s in Brampton. Minister McCallum knows that 40 years of bureaucratic determined overseas section has yet to come up with a program that was not doomed to collapse through corruption, frustration, cost and backlogs.  

Ontario’s undocumented trades workers stand as testament to government’s inability to see family immigration as a positive. Most of the Portuguese, Italian and Polish undocumented workers were pulled to Canada by the presence of established Canadian family. Many are employed in a family businesses, usually a trade.

The geniuses in Ottawa are genetically unable to do the simple and productive thing …go back to the future and simply build a project to grow family business with established workers.

So as John McCallum visits some families in Brampton that want to bring over the elderly, he may wish to consider the tens of thousands of other Brampton families that are being criminalized because officials still haven’t figured out how to document tax paying members of their families.   

Pierre Trudeau was right when he said that the police have no place in the nations’ bedrooms.Justin Trudeau should seize the opportunity and get the immigration bureaucracy out of the nation’s family businesses.

Richard Boraks, December 7 2016