Canadian Immigration Minister Tries to Hot Wire Immigration System

Canada’s Immigration Minister Jason Kenney is ready to hot wire the country’s immigration system by taking the whole system online. Kenney has vowed to introduce a new fast-track system in the immigration department by the end of this month.

Jason Kenney has proposed a new system, an online application system. This would enable the burden of applications to shift between different immigration offices in different locations. It means that if an immigration office located in a certain locality is experiencing application pile ups, it is not compulsory for them to process all application and instantly the applications can be transferred to any other office.

In this way, the applications will be processed in a much more timely manner, bringing down the time required for processing from years to merely months. But in order to complement this new online system, the quota of 500,000 applications received by the department is to be decreased to 250,000 applications, ensuring proper processing of each.

In addition to this, a fast-track system will also be introduced to quickly process applications of skilled and most employable potential immigrants, including those already residing in the country as post-secondary students and temporary foreign workers.

To make matters more interesting, Kenney also announced a special program that would fast-track temporary work permits. The program called one-year pilot project will complement the processing of temporary work permits of Alberta-bound technical heavy duty machine mechanics.

Those workers who belong to those countries whose citizens do not require a visa to enter Canada will receive their temporary work permits at airports in Canada, provided they have valid job offers from Alberta employers. After getting reasonable Canadian work experience, they are eligible to apply for permanent residence without leaving Canada.

All of this seems quite enthusiastic and certain. The actual capacity of this new system will appear when it starts to get implemented its capabilities cannot be questioned now as it is merely announcements and theories.

The anxiously awaited results from this system will tell that would it prove to be a solution for removal of backlogs once and for all or not.

All the same, this system might be the break the Canadian administration needed, but still it has stepped on the hopes of about 280,000 individuals. The fact remains that the administration did sacrifice to gain something, but that sacrifice was made by the people who wanted to become a part of this society.

The reason for such a shift was simple. To improvise the Canadian immigration process to make it more precise and accurate AND to dispose of the 5 to 6 year old backlog of skilled worker applications. These rejected applicants are to receive refunds amounting to $130 million taken from them as fees.

Kenney says that the whole process will be revived and these applicants will apply again, although no preference will be given to them and they will be part of the due process like all others.

In the pursuit of reforming the system, those who have waited for so long a time, and have improvised themselves to be fit for the Canadian society, are to be rejected without any reason. Such attitude of the administration disregarding these applicants probably will send the international community a message that the Canadian system is incompetent.

But there is nothing personal between the present government and these rejected applicants, as the present government did not create this backlog but inherited it from the previous government.

To solve this situation in a timely and competent manner, this was the only possible way to do it.  Jason Kenney’s proposal, how disregarding it may be to those rejected, might be the only way out because in such time frame, it would be impossible to eliminate a backlog as processing the previous applications would create another pile of new applications.

Tags: Alberta employers, Canada, Canada immigration, Canadian administration, Canadian Immigration, CIC, Citizenship and Immigration Canada, Immigration, Jason Kenney, one-year pilot project