Category Archives: Citizenship and Immigration Canada

Immigration Minister to Visit Silicon Valley to Promote ‘Start Up Visa’

Posted on by
Reply

Waterloo, Ontario, sometimes called Silicon North, is one of Canada’s major tech centres. Citizenship and Immigration Canada hopes the new Start Up Visa encourages foreign technology entrepreneurs to start companies in the country

Canadian Citizenship and Immigration Minister Jason Kenney will be visiting California’s Silicon Valley on Friday for a four day trip intended to promote Canada as a place to live for the region’s entrepreneurs.

According to an article in San Jose’s Mercury News, a billboard is currently appearing near Silicon Valley advertising Canada to foreign tech workers struggling with H-1B visa restrictions:

On Tuesday, just days before Kenney was set to tour San Francisco and the South Bay to promote his new visa for startup entrepreneurs, a giant red maple leaf emerged on a billboard off Highway 101 on the route from San Francisco to the heart of Silicon Valley, part of a Canadian advertisement encouraging tech workers here temporarily to migrate north permanently.

Modeled on an idea first introduced but never passed in the U.S. Congress, Canada’s new “startup visa” grants permanent residency to entrepreneurs who can raise enough venture capital and start a Canadian business.

“H-1B problems?” asks the South San Francisco billboard, referencing America’s temporary visa for skilled foreign workers. “Pivot to Canada.”

Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC) hopes to capitalize on the frustration tech companies in the U.S. are feeling over immigration restrictions on foreign technology workers and encourage them to relocate to and invest in Canada.

The eventual goal is to help foster the development of a Canadian equivalent to Silicon Valley.

One challenge that CIC faces in this mission is the country’s top marginal income tax rate, which is significantly higher than that of the U.S. A Canadian entrepreneur can look forward to paying about 50 percent of their income to the government if they succeed in joining the top bracket of income earners.

Compensating for this disadvantage, the federal government is offering a perk that no other advanced economy offers foreign entrepreneurs: permanent residency status.

For foreign tech workers in the U.S. anxiously awaiting the six year limits on their H-1B visas, immigration to Canada offers a chance of stability that only permanent residency can provide.

Also working in Canada’s favor is the perception of being a safer country than the U.S., with significantly lower violent crime rates, particularly homicide rates. A better fiscal situation, with a much lower deficit to GDP ratio than the U.S., also gives foreign nationals more confidence in the country’s economic future.

Regardless of how successful CIC’s headhunting campaign in Silicon Valley ends up being, the federal government has a lot of ground to make up for, with total venture capital funding in all of Canada in 2012 coming to $1.5 billion -less than 15 percent of the $10.9 billion worth of deals that happened in Silicon Valley last year.

Passports to be Handled by Citizenship and Immigration Canada

Posted on by
Reply

Passport services are not expected to change when Citizenship and Immigration Canada takes over responsibilities for them on July 2 2013

The federal government announced last week that Canadian passports would come under the responsibility of Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC) this summer.

Passport Canada is currently managed by the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade (DFAIT), which will officially transfer control of the program to CIC on July 2 2013.

Service Canada, which is a part of Human Resources and Skills Development Canada (HRSDC), meanwhile will manage passport operations, and Service Canada Centres will gradually offer more passport services, eventually also providing online applications for passports.

The federal government hopes to see efficiency gains from the move on account of CIC’s current responsibilities being more closely related to passports than those of DAIFT.

“The government is committed to making passport services more convenient and accessible for Canadians,” said Citizenship and Immigration Minister Jason Kenney. “As Citizenship and Immigration Canada is already responsible for determining Canadian citizenship, integrating the passport program into the department makes good sense.”

Human Resources and Skills Development Minister Diane Finley added:

“Through Service Canada, we offer single-window access to a wide range of Government of Canada programs and services for citizens. Leveraging Service Canada’s resources and service delivery network across the country will make passport services more accessible and convenient.”

Canada Has Second Largest Immigrant Population In Developed World -StatCan

Posted on by
Reply

Among the advanced economies, only Australia has more foreign born residents as a portion of its total population than Canada

Canada is behind only Australia in the relative size of its foreign born population, according to a new Statistics Canada report. Among the G8, Canada’s foreign born component, at 20.6 percent of the total population, is the largest.

The statistics follow the trend in recent years of Australia followed by Canada having the highest per capita immigration rates in the world.

Public opinion in the two countries, as well as in Finland and South Korea, has been the most accepting of immigration among the advanced economies.

The Statcan report shows that about 1,162,900 foreign-born individuals entered Canada between 2006 and 2011 and that combined they make up 17.2 percent of Canada’s total foreign-born population.

Among this group, 56.9 percent came from Asia and 78 percent are visible minorities. This is a reverse of the situation prior to 1970, when only 8.5 percent of the foreign born population was from Asia and 12.4 percent were visible minorities.

Citizenship and Immigration Canada Announces New Funding for Immigrant Settlement

Posted on by
Reply

Children in preschool. The HIPPY Canada program provides parents with limited education and/or income, and with pre-school aged children with counselling on preparing their child for school

Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC) announced it would provide $2.6 million to the Home Instruction for Parents of Preschool Youngsters (HIPPY) Program on Wednesday, saying that the funding will help new immigrants integrate more quickly after arriving in Canada.

HIPPY Canada describes itself on its website as:

an evidenced-based program that works with families in the home to support parents, primarily mothers, in their critical role as their child’s first and most important teacher. HIPPY strengthens families and communities by empowering mothers to actively prepare their children for success in school.

Over the past 13 years, HIPPY Canada has reached out to provide more than 6,000 low-income newcomer, Aboriginal and other Canadian mothers with structured lessons and practical information that develop their own and their child’s personal skills, ensuring both children and families a better opportunity to succeed in school and society.

In Canada, HIPPY’s efforts to measure results, combined with more than 20 years of research in the United States and eight other countries, have proven the benefits of the program for children, mothers, families and communities.

Commenting on the funding, Citizenship and Immigration Minister Jason Kenney said:

“Though programs like HIPPY, our government is giving newcomers the best chance possible to integrate into Canada and contribute to a prosperous society. The government has had a strong affiliation with the HIPPY Program for many years and is proud to help immigrant parents in their vital role as their child’s first and most important teacher.”

CIC will spend about $600 million this year on settlement services for new immigrants, up for $200 million in 2005-06. The funding is motivated in part by the federal government’s mission to improve immigrant integration in order to reverse the growing income and unemployment gap between new immigrants and other Canadians.

Toronto Star Reports On Government Efforts Against Marriage Fraud

Posted on by
Reply

Efforts by Citizenship and Immigration Canada, the Canada Border Services Agency and the RCMP seem to be reducing the number of fraudulent marriage sponsorships (Ra Boe)

The Toronto Star, the most widely circulated newspaper in Canada, published a story on Wednesday that describes the marriage sponsorship fraud that authorities are clamping down on and some of the obstacles the anti-abuse measures are imposing on Canadians seeking to sponsor foreign spouses.

The article, by the Toronto Star’s immigration reporter, Nicholas Keung, profiles Sarem Soomro, whose marriage sponsorship application was rejected by Canadian immigration officials due to the education and age gap between the younger, high-school educated, Soomro, and his Pakistani wife, who has a degree in economics.

Despite showing logs of Facebook chats, wedding photos, receipts, and a wedding certificate, authorities did not accept the sponsorship application.

In another case, a spouse who was already living in Canada while the sponsorship application was being reviewed received a surprise visit at her home which convinced the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) that the marriage was a fraud:

That occurred in a case where border officers noticed the address on Xiu Yi Xuan’s driver’s licence was different than the address of her Canadian husband.

In a scene reminiscent of the 1990 romantic comedy Green Card, about a marriage of convenience, the Canada Border Services Agency made an unannounced visit to the couple’s Markham home to investigate.

Xuan, a failed refugee claimant from China, was home at the time and unable to produce her husband’s toothbrush (she claimed they shared one). She couldn’t say whether her husband used an electric razor or a disposable one, nor could she show the officer any evidence of his socks or underwear.

Despite other indications it was a genuine marriage — joint bank accounts, joint insurance, joint donations and ownership of a Stouffville property — Xuan was arrested. The couple’s spousal sponsorship was rejected and, most recently, their appeal to Federal Court denied.

The two types of immigration fraud that Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC) encounters, Keung notes, are cases where a foreign national manipulates and defrauds a Canadian, in order to get sponsored by them for permanent residence, and then leaves them once they have gotten what they wanted, and cases of collusion between the Canadian and the foreign national, where both understand that the primary purpose of the marriage is to provide the foreigner with Canadian permanent residency.

CIC has made changes to sponsorship rules to reduce the incidence of the first type, including instituting an initial two year probationary permanent resident status for sponsored spouses. Under the new rules, if the foreign spouse leaves their Canadian partner within that two year period, due to reasons other than neglect or abuse, their conditional permanent residency status is repealed.

The RCMP has had some successes prosecuting crime rings involving the second type of marriage fraud, including one where nearly 300 Canadian women, mostly of Haitian descent, were sponsoring men from North Africa in exchange for money.

The changes by the involved government agencies seem to be having an effect, with more people being deported on charges of sponsorship fraud annually, and a higher percentage of marriage sponsorship applications being found inadmissible due to lack of evidence of a genuine marriage.

Changes Made to Canada’s Temporary Foreign Worker Program

Posted on by
3

HRSDC Minister Diane Finley speaking in the House of Commons last September. New rules and increased fees for work permit applications were announced by Finley and Citizenship and Immigration Minister Jason Kenney on Monday (Government of Canada)

Amid controversy and criticism over a series of incidents involving temporary foreign workers (TFWs) in recent months, including a story that emerged last month of Canadian workers losing their jobs to foreign workers at the Royal Canadian Bank, the federal government has announced several immediate and upcoming changes to the Temporary Foreign Worker Program (TFWP).

These changes are:

  • An employer is required to guarantee to pay a TFW prevailing wages for that foreign worker to be eligible for a work permit, effective immediately. The rule allowing companies to pay TFWs 15 percent less than prevailing wages for high-skilled positions, and 5 percent less for low skilled ones has been repealed.

    •  

  • The Accelerated Labour Market Opinion (ALMO) has been suspended, effective immediately.

    •  

  • The federal government is seeking the authority to suspend a Labour Market Opinion (LMO) if new information emerges showing that it negatively affects the Canadian economy and Canadian workers, and revoke work permits that were authorized by that LMO.

    •  

  • Fees employers pay for work permit and LMO applications will increase so that a portion of the cost of processing them will no longer have to be paid out of general taxes.

    •  

  • Job requirements for positions that use TFWs can only have English or French as required languages, unless an employer receives a special exemption after having shown Human Resources and Skills Development Canada (HRSDC) why the foreign language is necessary for the position.

The new rules attempt to close some of the major loopholes that critics have identified in the program that they say allow Canadian companies to use foreign workers instead of available Canadian workers.

The changes were jointly announced by HRSDC Minister Diane Finley and Citizenship and Immigration Minister Jason Kenney on Monday.

Immigration Canada Releases Two New Videos for Newcomers

Posted on by
1

The Your First Two Weeks in Canada video is one of two videos released by Citizenship and Immigration Canada on Friday to provide orientation to newcomers to Canada (Citizenship and Immigration Canada)

Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC) on Friday introduced two videos to help new immigrants to Canada prepare for life in their new country.

The first video, entitled Before Arriving in Canada, explains what immigrants can do before they arrive to Canada to settle in Canada and find a good job more quickly. Suggestions include:

  • if English or French ability is limited, improving language skills
  • gather all important documents, like birth certificates and dental records, and bring them to Canada
  • getting certified translations of important documents
  • preparing for accommodations before leaving for Canada

The second video, Your First Two Weeks in Canada, includes explanations on what immigrants can expect at the airport when arriving in Canada, how newcomers can use immigrant-serving organizations to get assistance and information, and what government documents they need to apply for upon their arrival.

The videos can be seen below:

Before Arriving in Canada

Your First Two Weeks in Canada

‘Welcome to Canada’ Tool To Help Immigrants Adjust to New Life

Posted on by
1

The Welcome to Canada publication and tool provide guidance on preparing for and adjusting to a new life in Canada (Citizenship and Immigration Canada)

Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC) released a new ‘Welcome to Canada’ booklet and tool last week to provide immigrants with guidance on how to prepare for life in Canada and with information to assist them in their first few months in the country.

Citizenship and Immigration Minister Jason Kenney announced the new tool at a press conference at the MOSAIC settlement service centre:

“Our Government is committed to ensuring newcomers to Canada integrate and succeed in the Canadian economy and society as soon as possible. The new edition of Welcome to Canada shows our commitment to helping the citizens of tomorrow experience a smoother transition into their new community and into the Canadian workforce.”

The booklet provides information on a variety of subjects that academic research and consultations with new immigrants concluded would likely be useful to immigrants, including how to sign up for language classes, and Canada’s education system, laws and justice system, and job market.

The ‘Welcome to Canada Tool’ provides customized settlement plans for would-be immigrants based on information they input, and also provides a local immigrant-serving organization Find Services map, to which they can bring their customized settlement plan for additional support.

CIC has stepped up efforts to improve the economic integration of immigrants in recent years as data has shown a growing income gap between new immigrants and the general population despite rising immigrant education levels.

Immigration Department to Make it Difficult for Vancouver / Toronto Bound Immigrants to Use Quebec Investor Program

Posted on by
3

The Parliament of Quebec in Quebec City. Quebec Immigration announced new rules for Quebec Skilled Worker and Investor applicants requiring applicants to have either permission from Citizenship and Immigration Canada or a connection to the province of Quebec in order to apply for either program

Citizenship and Immigration Minister Jason Kenney said last week that his department wanted to put an end to foreign nationals immigrating to Canada through the Quebec Immigrant Investor Program, but settling in Vancouver or Toronto.

At a press conference on March 26st, Kenney said that immigrant investors who apply for permanent residence through the Quebec program but intend to settle in a city outside Quebec are committing fraud.

“If you are sitting somewhere today hoping to apply for the Quebec investor program but you expect to go and live in Vancouver or Toronto, that is fraud. It’s misrepresentation under the Immigration Act. It doesn’t matter what agents and recruitment people tell you and we intend to begin cracking down on the fraud being committed,” said Kenney.

According to Kenney, 90 percent of Quebec Immigrant Investor Program immigrants settle in Vancouver or Toronto. Last year, speaking on the same subject, he said that this large inflow of immigrant investors into Vancouver and Toronto pushes up housing prices in these metropolitan regions, making it more difficult for other residents to afford to buy property in those cities.

The Quebec Investor Program is expected to start accepting applications on July 31st, after a more than one year moratorium on acceptance of new applications, and Kenney says his department would take efforts to stop the practice of immigrants using it as a means to settle in the two immigrant magnet cities.

New rules for the Quebec Investor and Skilled Worker programs, announced last week after Kenney’s statements, require that applicants either receive permission from Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC) to apply for the Quebec programs, or have some prior or existing connection to the province.

A connection would constitute any one of several situations, including an offer of employment by a Quebec employer and a diploma treated as a Quebec diploma.

Former Immigration Officer Sentenced to Four Years in Prison

Posted on by
1

Statue of Justicia in Ottawa Canada. Diane Serré was sentenced to four years in prison for using her position at Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC) to fast-track permanent resident applications in exchange for bribes

Former Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC) officer Diane Serré was sentenced to four years in prison on Thursday for accepting bribes in exchange for preferential official treatment of applications for permanent residence.

Serré was found guilty of 15 counts of fraud and 12 counts of breach of trust by an Ontario Superior Court Justice in June for using her position as a CIC officer to help ten immigration applicants.

Police recorded hundreds of conversations between Serré and Issam Dakik, her esthetician’s husband, which were used as evidence against her in trial. Dakik plead guilty to charges in connection with the case in 2006, and spent 33 months in prison.

According to investigators, Dakik received at least $25,900 in bribes from immigration applicants. Police suspect that Serré received a portion of that as they found $300 in an envelope at her home that an undercover officer had given Dakik.

Ontario Court Justice Catherine Aitken, who presided over the case, said that Aitken’s actions put the country’s security at risk.

In one case that Justice Aitkin brought attention to, Serré fast-tracked the permanent resident application of a man who used three different family names, had passports in multiple countries, had been charged for a criminal offence in Canada, and had been sponsored by a woman who he had married and was 20 years older than him, all “red flags” that were ignored.