Immigration

Spring Magazine: International solidarity works: Hossam el-Hamalawy wins entry to Canada

In the morning of August 31, Egyptian journalist Hossam el-Hamalawy received an email from Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC), informing him that it had made a “u-turn” and reversed its decision to deny him entry to Canada.

The reversal came in response to a coordinated solidarity campaign that successfully pressured IRCC, Canada’s department of immigration, to change course.

Almost two weeks earlier, on August 18, IRCC rejected el-Hamalawy’s application for an Electronic Travel Authorization (eTA), which is required for German citizens to visit Canada. An Egyptian exile and refugee, el-Hamalawy resides in Berlin and has German citizenship. His eTA application was to attend two public speaking engagements in September at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia, Canada.

IRCC initially rejected el-Hamalawy’s eTA application after requesting three times that he provide official documents from the Egyptian government that corroborate his experience of detention and torture under the regime.

In Toronto, the Executive Director of REDWORD.ca, Mostafa Al-A’sar, prepared an open letter to Minister Diab signed by prominent labour leaders, journalists, and human rights activists, including Mostafa Fouad, Executive Director of HuMENA for Human Rights; Ehab Lotayef, founding member of Egyptian Canadian Coalition for Democracy; Judy Rebick, feminist and journalist; and Sid Ryan, former President of the Ontario Federation of Labour.

Other activists launched an email campaign, which encouraged supporters to send letters to Minister Diab and her Parliamentary Secretary, Liberal Member of Parliament Peter Fragiskatos (London Centre), as well as their own Members of Parliament. Letters were sent from across Canada, including Halifax, Nova Scotia (Diab’s home riding) and London, Ontario (Fragiskatos’s home riding). Activists in the United States, Britain, and Europe also shared the email appeal.

In addition to the appeal, activists organized two emergency phone actions, which delivered over 200 voicemail messages to Diab, Fragiskatos, and dozens of Members of Parliament.

Finally, on August 31, Jenny Kwan shared her own open letter to the Minister, which echoed all the demands of the solidarity campaign.

*Click image or link to read the article - https://springmag.ca/international-solidarity-works-hossam-el-hamalawy-wins-entry-to-canada

OPEN LETTER: Urgent request to facilitate the entry of Egyptian journalist and human rights advocate Hossam el-Hamalawy

My open letter to Immigration Minister Lena Diab requesting urgent intervention to facilitate entry into Canada for Hossam el-Hamalawy.  

Mr. el-Hamalawy is an award-winning Egyptian journalist, scholar, and human rights advocate who fled persecution in Egypt and is now a German citizen living in exile. He was invited by faculty at Simon Fraser University (SFU) to give two academic lectures this September. However, IRCC denied his Electronic Travel Authorization (eTA) after demanding documentation from the very Egyptian authorities responsible for his past detention and persecution—putting him in an impossible and unsafe position.  

It is deeply problematic to expect political exiles to seek papers from the regime they fled. Canada must stand up for human rights, academic freedom, and freedom of the press. I am calling on Minister Diab to use her discretion and immediately reconsider this decision so Mr. el-Hamalawy can share his scholarship at SFU.  

CBC News: Demand for Canadian citizenship certificates soaring, fuelled by Americans

Applications from people around the world seeking Canadian citizenship certificates have been rising rapidly in recent months, fuelled by thousands of applications from the United States, CBC News has learned.

The number of people who have already received certificates as a result of Parliament’s adoption of “Lost Canadian” legislation late last year rose nearly 50 per cent between April 1 and May 31, according to new data obtained by CBC. 

Bill C-3 allows citizenship for those who can prove they're descended from a Canadian ancestor, even if that ancestor left the country several generations back. It was adopted after the courts ruled that limiting citizenship to the first generation born outside of Canada was too restrictive. 

Between mid-December — when Bill C-3 went into effect — and May 31, some 6,100 citizenship certificates were granted by Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) to those who now qualify.

That is up from 4,075 certificates issued as a result of Bill C-3 from mid-December until March 31.

Another 17,390 people have received certificates as a result of having a Canadian parent. Prior to the bill's adoption, those who were born outside Canada had to have a Canadian parent to qualify for citizenship.

In June, IRCC suddenly suspended an estimated 100 certificates that had already been issued after flagging problems with the documents submitted with the applications. The concern from archivists is that some people who've already applied to IRCC will be sent back to archives to find more genealogical records.

The IRCC says 83 of the suspensions have been resolved and the certificates restored. It has sent procedural fairness letters to another 17 people whose certificates were suspended and given them 60 days to submit the documents necessary to prove their Canadian ancestry. 

If they fail to provide acceptable proof, their citizenship certificates could be revoked.

New Democrat immigration critic Jenny Kwan said she has been getting letters and inquiries from people affected by the suspension letters and has written to Metlege Diab, calling for answers.

“It really makes no sense whatsoever, what’s going on," Kwan said. "And the minister is completely ignoring that reality right now.”

*Click image or link to read the news story - https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canadian-citizenship-certificates-americans-9.7307536

Georgia Straight: A Palestinian artist’s Vancouver show is in limbo, again

A Palestinian artist has been waiting nearly a year for permission to enter Canada to tell his own story on a Vancouver stage. Now, that wait could silence The Horse of Jenin for a second time.

The Cultch says the acclaimed solo production, co-presented with Rumble Theatre and scheduled to open October 8, could once again be cancelled because performer Alaa Mohammed Said Shehada’s Temporary Resident Visa remains stuck in security screening.

Shehada grew up in the Jenin refugee camp in the occupied West Bank, and The Horse of Jenin draws from his childhood and experiences as a Palestinian. He now lives in Amsterdam, holds long-term residency in the United Kingdom and the Netherlands, as well as a British work permit, and has travelled internationally throughout his career.

Getting to Canada has proven considerably more difficult.

Shehada applied for his Canadian visa on August 17, 2025 and completed biometrics in The Hague on September 5. According to The Cultch, he has passed both criminality and eligibility assessments. The remaining security verification has been underway since September, with no timeline provided for its completion.

That delay has already kept the Palestinian artist from a Vancouver stage once.

The Horse of Jenin was originally scheduled to be presented at The Cultch in March, but the production was postponed when Shehada’s visa wasn’t processed in time. The October run was supposed to give Vancouver audiences another opportunity to see the work. With less than two months to go, its fate is once again uncertain.

The Cultch has had to rearrange programming, communicate with ticket holders, process exchanges and refunds and absorb additional operational costs as a result of the uncertainty.

But there is another loss that is harder to quantify. The Horse of Jenin gives a Palestinian artist the opportunity to tell a story about Palestinian life in his own words, on his own terms. As Palestinian stories, art and cultural expression face intense scrutiny internationally, the continued delay means Vancouver audiences may once again lose the opportunity to hear that story directly from the person telling it.

Vancouver East MP Jenny Kwan has been pushing the federal government for answers. According to The Cultch, her office has made numerous inquiries with Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada and the Ministerial Centre for Members of Parliament and Senators since January. The response has remained essentially the same: Shehada’s application is still undergoing security screening.

“Our request is straightforward,” Kwan said in a statement. “Mr. Shehada and The Cultch cannot keep rescheduling this performance indefinitely.”

Kwan also noted that her office has assisted with urgent Temporary Resident Visa applications for other performing artists and that, in most cases, particularly once biometrics were completed, applications were processed in time for their scheduled performances.

The reason Shehada’s application has remained in security screening for so long has not been made public. Without an explanation from IRCC, it would be speculative to attribute the delay to his Palestinian identity, but the impact is clear: a Palestinian artist has already been prevented from presenting his work in Vancouver once and, nearly a year after applying to enter Canada, he still doesn’t know whether he’ll be able to do so the second time around.

*Click image or link to read the story - https://www.straight.com/arts/a-palestinian-artists-vancouver-show-is-in-limbo-again#

Asian Pacific Post: “How Many More Years Must I Wait?”

For six years, Rajesh Sharma has watched his parents grow older from half a world away.

The Vancouver area small businessman came to Canada from India, built a career, bought a home and met the income requirements to sponsor his mother and father.

His father’s health is failing. His mother now struggles to manage their home alone. Sharma spends his evenings arranging medical appointments from Canada and wondering how many more birthdays and family milestones they will miss.

Ottawa’s recent decision to suspend new applications for the Parent and Grandparent Program (PGP) until further notice has turned that uncertainty into something more final.

For Sharma and thousands of other immigrants, there is now no application date, no place in the queue and no assurance their aging parents will ever be able to join them permanently in Canada.

NDP immigration critic Jenny Kwan said the decision leaves Canadians and permanent residents with no date to apply, no guarantee the program will reopen and little hope of reuniting with aging parents caught outside the country.

“The government has shamefully once again suspended new intakes to the Parent and Grandparent sponsorship program,” she said.

“At this rate, it will take decades to clear the backlog. Families cannot afford to wait decades to be reunited with their parents and grandparents.”

Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada announced July 15 that it will stop accepting new interest-to-sponsor forms and will not invite more potential sponsors to submit applications until further notice.

The department said it will continue processing applications already in the system and plans to approve up to 15,000 parents and grandparents for permanent residence in 2026.

The department currently has about 60,500 permanent residence applications under the Parents and Grandparents Program in progress.

Processing times are approximately 33 months outside Quebec and can reach 66 months in Quebec. About 54,000 expressions of interest from the original 2020 pool were still outstanding as of September 2025.

Kwan said the government is managing the backlog by restricting access rather than fixing a system that has kept families waiting for years.

“It has remained closed since 2020, shattering dreams of family reunification for thousands of Canadians and permanent residents,” she said.

“Families who have been eagerly waiting for the application system to reopen are once again being told by the Liberals that they are out of luck. It is a slap in the face of families who have waited so long to reunite with their loved ones.”

The suspension comes as Ottawa sharply reduces the number of parents and grandparents it plans to admit.

Under the 2026-2028 Immigration Levels Plan, the federal government has set a target of 15,000 admissions through the program in each of the next three years.

The previous plan had called for 21,500 admissions in 2026, meaning the new target represents a reduction of about 30 per cent.

*Click image or link to read the full news article - https://asianpacificpost.com/article/10670-%E2%80%9Chow-many-more-years-must-i-wait%E2%80%9D.html

City TV News: Hong Kong PR pathway applicants face more than 10-year wait as program nears end

When the federal government launched the permanent residence pathways for Hong Kong residents, it was described as a faster route for eligible Hong Kong nationals already in Canada to become permanent residents.

Five years later, the Hong Kong pathway is set to close Aug. 31, while tens of thousands of applicants are still waiting.

For applicants like Roger Yeung, the wait is no longer just about immigration paperwork. It is affecting careers, education, and the ability to plan a future in Canada.

Roger Yeung has been living in Vancouver since April 2023. He applied for permanent residence under the Hong Kong pathway in October 2024, but says there has been no progress.

NDP immigration critic Jenny Kwan says the wait is unacceptable.

Kwan says the federal government originally promised expedited processing for Hong Kongers under the lifeboat program, and that the process appeared to work in the first year.

“The government, in this first year of implementation of the Lifeboat Stream A, Stream B program, they did expedite the process,” Kwan said.

“But then, over the years, we started to notice that the government was slowing down in the processing.”

Kwan says the problem grew after Hong Kong pathway applications were grouped under the Humanitarian and Compassionate and Other category.

She said that category also includes other urgent commitments, including Ukraine and Sudan, leaving Hong Kong applicants competing for limited space.

“For Hong Kongers, there are over 33,000 applications waiting in the backlog, and that’s just for Hong Kongers,” Kwan said.

“If you add in Ukraine and Sudan, you can just imagine how lengthy the wait is.”

To clear the backlog, Kwan says the federal government should change the Immigration Levels Plan quota and allocate enough spaces to process existing applications. She also called on Ottawa to restore immigration staffing levels.

“Rebuild the trust. Honour what you promised Hong Kongers, and deliver on the program. Change the quota now,” Kwan said.

*Click image or link to watch or read the news story - https://vancouver.citynews.ca/2026/07/15/canada-hong-kong-pr-pathway-applicants-wait/

RED FM: IRCC pauses new parents and grandparents sponsorship applications

Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) has paused new applications and invitations under the Parents and Grandparents Program, known as PGP, until further notice.

The federal government says the pause is aimed at managing existing backlogs and improving processing times. About 60,500 permanent residence applications are already being processed, while the government plans to admit up to 15,000 applicants through the program in 2026.

The PGP has been facing high demand for years, with applications selected from a 2020 pool of more than 200,000 expressions of interest. The number of people hoping to bring parents and grandparents to Canada has continued to exceed available spaces.

Under Canada’s 2026–2028 Immigration Levels Plan, annual admissions through the program have been reduced from 21,500 to 15,000.

The decision has drawn criticism from opposition politicians and immigration advocates. NDP immigration critic Jenny Kwan says the pause could further delay family reunification and leave some families waiting for years.

*Click image or link to read the news story - https://redfm.ca/en-ca/calgary/news-articles/ircc-pauses-new-parents-and-grandparents-sponsorship-applications

Globe & Mail: Immigration department pauses applications to sponsor parents, grandparents to settle in Canada

The federal immigration department is facing calls to rethink a key family reunification program after it paused applications to sponsor grandparents and parents to settle in Canada as permanent residents, leaving thousands waiting years for their loved ones to join them.

On Wednesday, IRCC announced on its website that it will not accept any new formal expressions of interest to sponsor parents and grandparents to settle in Canada until further notice. It said it would also pause invitations to potential sponsors to apply to bring their parents and grandparents here to settle.

In a statement, Taous Ait, a spokesperson for immigration minister Lena Metlege Diab said the measures are “part of broader efforts to restore balance across immigration programs and support timely processing, while maintaining public confidence in Canada’s immigration system.”

She said decisions to open or pause new intakes to the program follow assessments of the number of people in “its inventory and application inventory, each year.”

“IRCC will continue processing up to 15,000 individuals this year who have already applied, in line with our Immigration Levels Plan,” she added.

The Parents and Grandparents Program (PGP) is a lottery-like pathway to permanent residence for family members who are foreign nationals. Demand to settle here under the program has far outstripped the number of permanent residence spots available under the government’s immigration targets.

In the 2026-2028 Immigration Levels Plan, published in last year’s budget, the government cut its target for new permanent residents under the parents and grandparents program to 15,000 in each of the three years.

In the previous 2025-2027 plan, its target was to admit 21,500 under the program this year.

Ottawa has allowed parents and grandparents living overseas to join family here for years. But in 2020, IRCC established a system creating a pool of expressions of interest-to-sponsor parents and grandparents. There were more than 200,000 responses in 2020. IRCC invited applications to settle here from this pool in subsequent years.

IRCC has previously been criticized for not opening up the pool to allow other immigrants to bring their parents and grandparents to join them permanently.

In a September, 2025 briefing note prepared for Liberal ministers at Question Period about 54,000 expressions of interest-to-sponsor remained from the 2020 pool that year. Ms. Ait said 60,500 applications for permanent residence under the program are in progress.

But NDP immigration critic Jenny Kwan said the system, which includes windows to formally apply, needed to be changed, including “setting standards to ensure that families are reunited in a reasonable period of time.”

The “government has shamefully once again suspended new intakes to the Parent/Grandparent sponsorship program,” she said in a statement.

“It has remained closed since 2020, shattering dreams of family reunification for thousands of Canadians and permanent residents. Families who have been eagerly waiting for the application system to reopen, are once again being told by the Liberals that they are out of luck. It is a slap in the face of families who has waited so long to reunite with their loved ones.”

“At this rate, it will take decades to clear the backlog of those who submitted their interest to sponsor their parents or grandparents,” she said. “Families cannot afford to wait decades to be reunited with their parents and grandparents.”

In order to sponsor parents and grandparents, people living in Canada must show that they have a certain level of income. They must also commit to financially supporting their parents and grandparents. Although those sponsored gain permanent residence, they cannot use government social-assistance programs. However, they can access health care.

*Click link to read the full news story - https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-immigration-department-pauses-applications-to-sponsor-parents/

Can Man VIDEO: Jenny Kwan Slams Both Liberals and Conservatives

Veteran Member of Parliament Jenny Kwan joins CanMen for an in-depth conversation about the future of Canada’s immigration system, the direction of the Carney government, and the growing political divide over immigration. In this exclusive interview, Jenny Kwan shares her views on the Liberal government’s immigration policies, the Conservative Party’s approach, parliamentary accountability, and why she believes Canada’s immigration system needs urgent reform. We also discuss: 

• The future of Canada’s immigration policies 
• The Hong Kong Pathway and its ongoing challenges
• Immigration processing delays and backlogs
• Government accountability and transparency
• The role of Parliament under Prime Minister Mark Carney
• What these issues mean for newcomers and Canadians alike 

Whether you’re interested in Canadian politics, immigration, or public policy, this interview provides valuable insight into one of the country’s most important national conversations.

*Click image or link to watch the interview video - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gno10aLlxZc

New Canadian Media: Proof-of-citizenship wait jumps to 19 months as queue nears 100,000

People applying for proof of Canadian citizenship are now facing a projected wait of about 19 months, as Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada’s public processing-time tool shows about 99,500 people waiting for a decision.

The July 7 update marks a sharp increase for citizenship certificate applications, also known as proof of citizenship. In April, the wait for the same category was listed at 10 months, with 56,300 applications in line, according to a CIC News report tracking IRCC’s processing-time. By May 12, the wait had risen to 12 months and the queue to about 70,400, according to Moving2Canada. The same platform said the queue stood at 40,400 on Dec. 10, 2025, five days before changes to Canada’s Citizenship Act took effect.

A citizenship certificate is not the same as a citizenship grant. A grant is for permanent residents applying to become citizens. A certificate is proof that someone is already Canadian under the law, including people born outside Canada to Canadian parents, people replacing older proof-of-citizenship documents, and people whose citizenship may have been restored or recognized because of recent legal changes.

The certificate can matter for practical reasons. IRCC says people who believe they may have become citizens under Bill C-3 — the law that changed Canada’s citizenship-by-descent rules — must apply for a citizenship certificate to confirm their status. The document can also be used to apply for a Canadian passport.

Bill C-3 changed Canada’s first-generation limit on citizenship by descent and came into force on Dec. 15, 2025. Under the new rules, some individuals whose connection to a Canadian citizen extends beyond one generation are eligible to apply for citizenship by descent. 

NDP immigration critic Jenny Kwan said IRCC should publish more detailed information, including how many proof-of-citizenship applications are waiting, what counts as non-routine and how many files have been designated that way.

“Publishing a single processing time creates false expectations and leaves applicants unable to plan their lives,” Kwan said in a written response. “It doesn’t work as public policy and it doesn’t work for the people applying.”

She said delays have real consequences.

“People can’t obtain passports, travel, access opportunities, or fully exercise their rights as Canadians,” she said. “Effectively their lives are in limbo.”

*Click image or link to read the news story - https://newcanadianmedia.ca/proof-of-citizenship-wait-jumps-to-19-months-as-queue-nears-100000/