Visas, Along Ideological Lines
Canada's immigration and refugee system received a hot blast of condemnation from the interim Auditor General, John Wiersema, who tabled the latest audit report in the House of Commons. Canada Border Services Agency and Citizenship and Immigration Canada are insufficiently guided, trained, lacking adequate information to do their job properly. They are incapable, according to Mr. Wiersema, of properly ascertaining who should be allowed entry to this country.
Over a million applications, according to the report, were processed for individuals wishing to acquire temporary residence in Canada. Over 300,000 applications similarly processed for people who applied for permanent residence, in the year 2010. The information manuals available to visa officers are old, and haven't been updated to include fairly recent determining data.
Security checks are not extensively carried out to identify those who might present as a threat to the country. And health checks, relying on old criteria look only for two health problems, rather than the 56 that are seen as critical in protecting the population from exotic diseases emanating from foreign sources.
Obviously, there is a problem. The two agencies are under-staffed in relation to the huge numbers that are permitted entry to Canada. And there is no adequate follow-up available to ensure that those who enter the country regardless, leave when they are supposed to. Yet those who make their living off assisting and enabling visa entrants to Canada are screaming bloody murder.
Claiming that the judges who were appointed by the current and past Conservative-led Governments of Canada are ideologically weighted against overturning decisions by government officers and tribunals to deny refugee claims or deport non-citizens. The judges who were appointed by previous Liberal-led governments have proven far more likely to overturn decisions in favour of appealing claimants.
Little wonder visa officers are spending so much of their time preparing to defend their decisions; no one wants to be on the hot seat without a viable defence. And since there are here conflicting ideologies there's little wonder that those with a conservative bent rule differently than those with a liberal bent. As much as we should be objective in such rulings, we are subjective creatures of habitual thinking.
Female judges are noted to have upheld roughly half of the appeals and judicial review applications they rule on, compared to 39% of cases heard by male judges, so there's that dissimilarity in attitudes to consider, as well. And to further confuse the issue, judges from Quebec appear to rule less in favour of refused visa applicants than judges from the rest of Canada.
The problem here is that everyone wants to have it their way or no way. Criticism of the guidelines and procedures and human decision-making comes cheap. How to fix a system that may not need fixing at all, is another thing entirely. Canada is a sovereign country that can be potentially threatened by security issues arising from ulterior motives from those who have their own foreign axes to grind.
Maintaining security of law and order and what we pride ourselves for as a liberal, Western democracy, along with ensuring that health standards are upheld, represent a very large issue for which optimum effort is maintained. Despite which, there are cracks and fissures and some hisses about judicial unfairness from sources who stand to gain in their professional careers as immigration specialists.
Constructive criticism is always useful; criticism along ideological lines not so much.
"We've been reporting some of these problems with visas for 20 years, and I find it disturbing that these fundamental weaknesses still exist."The two departments, according to the Auditor-General's report, focus too much of their attention and energy on defending cases where they have denied an individual entry into Canada. Which actually represents a small percentage of applicants who take the opportunity to mount a court challenge to their exclusion, rather than on the actual review of cases ultimately permitted entry.
Over a million applications, according to the report, were processed for individuals wishing to acquire temporary residence in Canada. Over 300,000 applications similarly processed for people who applied for permanent residence, in the year 2010. The information manuals available to visa officers are old, and haven't been updated to include fairly recent determining data.
Security checks are not extensively carried out to identify those who might present as a threat to the country. And health checks, relying on old criteria look only for two health problems, rather than the 56 that are seen as critical in protecting the population from exotic diseases emanating from foreign sources.
Obviously, there is a problem. The two agencies are under-staffed in relation to the huge numbers that are permitted entry to Canada. And there is no adequate follow-up available to ensure that those who enter the country regardless, leave when they are supposed to. Yet those who make their living off assisting and enabling visa entrants to Canada are screaming bloody murder.
Claiming that the judges who were appointed by the current and past Conservative-led Governments of Canada are ideologically weighted against overturning decisions by government officers and tribunals to deny refugee claims or deport non-citizens. The judges who were appointed by previous Liberal-led governments have proven far more likely to overturn decisions in favour of appealing claimants.
Little wonder visa officers are spending so much of their time preparing to defend their decisions; no one wants to be on the hot seat without a viable defence. And since there are here conflicting ideologies there's little wonder that those with a conservative bent rule differently than those with a liberal bent. As much as we should be objective in such rulings, we are subjective creatures of habitual thinking.
Female judges are noted to have upheld roughly half of the appeals and judicial review applications they rule on, compared to 39% of cases heard by male judges, so there's that dissimilarity in attitudes to consider, as well. And to further confuse the issue, judges from Quebec appear to rule less in favour of refused visa applicants than judges from the rest of Canada.
The problem here is that everyone wants to have it their way or no way. Criticism of the guidelines and procedures and human decision-making comes cheap. How to fix a system that may not need fixing at all, is another thing entirely. Canada is a sovereign country that can be potentially threatened by security issues arising from ulterior motives from those who have their own foreign axes to grind.
Maintaining security of law and order and what we pride ourselves for as a liberal, Western democracy, along with ensuring that health standards are upheld, represent a very large issue for which optimum effort is maintained. Despite which, there are cracks and fissures and some hisses about judicial unfairness from sources who stand to gain in their professional careers as immigration specialists.
Constructive criticism is always useful; criticism along ideological lines not so much.
Labels: Government of Canada, Human Relations, Immigration, Inconvenient Politics, Justice
posted by Pieface | 2:32 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home