Immigration

CIMM#97: Government's Response to Afghanistan Final Report and Committee Business

Jenny Kwan Vancouver East, BC
NDP

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

We were just talking about the issue of the appearance of the minister and those requests. As the clerk had indicated, the request on the Gaza and Sudan motion following the first appearance was actually made to the minister's office on March 21. It is now May 1, and we still have not had a response in terms of offering a date from the minister and the officials to reappear. I don't think that's acceptable. The reality is that this is an urgent situation. People are dying. I know of family members who submitted their application and since that time, they have already lost their loved ones. We can't just delay and delay. We can't have the minister ignore the request of the committee. We need to redouble our efforts and to get the minister here so we can get some answers for the families.

I'm going to leave it at that. I trust the work of the clerk. I have no doubt that the clerk has done what he needs to do on behalf of the committee. I thank the clerk for his effort. Perhaps this is more of a message for the minister and their office to get on with scheduling the minister to appear before the committee and to meet all the commitments that have been requested of the minister by the committee on the motions. All of those issues are important; otherwise, we would not have passed them at this committee.

Mr. Chair, at this point, I'd like to move this motion:

That, pursuant to Standing Order 108(2), the committee add an additional meeting to the study adopted on February 12, 2024 regarding the pension transferability and access to Mandatory Provident Fund (MPF) for Hongkongers, to study the processing delays for permanent residence applications of Hongkongers, potential differential treatment among different Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) visa offices, and the status of priority processing for applicants in Canada and abroad.

The reason I'm moving this motion at this point, Mr. Chair, is that I have spoken with a lot of Hong Kongers whose applications are simply stuck in the system. For example, Hong Kong Link and VSSDM are active organizations working with Hong Kongers. They are people who have made an application. Originally, the priority processing time for these applications was six months, and now it is to the tune of 21 months. People are still waiting for the PR applications to be processed. In the meantime, people's work permits are expiring. Their study permits are expiring. They're losing their medical coverage. Dependent children are having difficulty accessing education. You can see how difficult that whole scenario is for people.

While this is happening, in Hong Kong, they've recently passed the new Safeguarding National Security Ordinance, which only means they will further escalate the arbitrary arrests and detentions of Hong Kongers.

You can see how frantic people are with the situation. They're so worried about their study permit or work permit expiring, falling out of status and being sent back to Hong Kong to face that situation. I can tell you nothing good will come out of that.

It is really urgent for the minister to come and also address this issue as well. I hope that committee members will support this. This will be in addition to the pension question, which is also a critically important issue.

HANSARD: Question to Minister on Hong Kong Pathway processing issues

Olympics: Erin Brooks: The resilient surfer behind the image of a teenage dream

Erin Brooks proudly sporting the maple leaf
While Brooks’ home base in Hawaii helped her to shoot into the top echelons of surfing at lightning speed, it indirectly also put her competitive future in jeopardy.

Brooks was born and raised in the United States, but her grandfather was born and raised in Montreal and her father is a dual American-Canadian citizen. She applied to become a Canadian citizen by descent, but due to the intricacies of the country's immigration laws concerning descendants who are living abroad, her citizenship was still not approved when she took part in the 2023 ISA World Surfing Games.

The International Surfing Association reviewed Brooks’ citizenship status after the competition, in which she finished second behind Pan American Games champion Tatiana Weston-Webb, and decided to suspend her eligibility to compete as a Canadian.

After several months of uncertainty – including her application initially getting turned down - Brooks received her Canadian citizenship in January 2024 with the help of parliament member Jenny Kwan.

“Having my Canadian citizenship, I'm so glad that I got it because it was a little bit of a struggle, but I had so many great people helping me and I just had to have faith in them that it would happen," Brooks said. "I'm glad that I can now compete for Canada and be a Canadian along with my family."

Open Letter: Gaza Family Reunification Measures

Over the past two months, I have become aware of more than two-hundred Palestinian Canadians with either citizenship or permanent resident status across the country that have applied to sponsor their family members in Gaza to come to Canada through the family reunification program. These families have begun the application process to bring nearly 2,500 loved ones from Gaza in total. Of these family members stuck in Gaza, 78 per cent are still waiting to receive the code from Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) that is required to proceed to the next phase and complete their application.

Your department has stated that 986 people have received a code and used it to submit a temporary resident visa (TRV) application which has been accepted into processing. It is apparent that the code issuing system works in lockstep with the 1,000-person cap to severely restrict the inflow of applications. It should be abundantly clear that you must lift the cap.

It has been almost seventy days since the program opened for applications on January 9. These families are desperate to know when, or if, loved ones will be allowed to come to Canada. For many, the news is consuming their life as they anxiously await to hear from IRCC officials regarding their application. Yet they are met with radio silence from IRCC. The process is frankly excruciating to for family members. The federal NDP caucus has already condemned this non-communicative approach, called on you to lift the arbitrary cap, and change the discriminatory lens through which this policy approaches Palestinians.

 

 

CIMM#93: Closed Work Permits and Temporary Foreign Workers and Briefing on Recent Changes to International Student Policy and Plans for Future Measures

On the question around student housing, I absolutely think that it is essential for institutions and provinces do their part and I think that the federal government should show leadership and perhaps initiate a program wherein the federal government contributes a third of the funding, institutions provide a third of the funding, and the provinces and territories provide a third of the funding towards the creation of student housing, both for international students and domestic students. That way you can have a robust plan to address the housing needs of the students.

I'm going to park that for a minute and quickly get into the students who were subject to fraud. We have a situation in which students have now been cleared and found to be genuine by the task force, but they have not gotten their passports back yet. I don't know what the holdup is, and I wonder if the minister can comment on that.

Second, there are students who are still waiting to be evaluated by the task force, and the task force work can't proceed because they might be waiting for a date for the IRB to assess the question on their permit on whether or not it was genuine or whether or not there was misrepresentation. They are consequently in a situation in which people are just chasing their tails and they can't get to the task force.

On that question, will the minister agree that instead of making people go through that process with the IRB, the task force evaluation can move forward first so that they can be found to be either a genuine student or not a genuine student?

 

HANSARD: Will the minister lift the arbitrary caps arbitrary for Canadians with families in Gaza and Sudan ?

OPEN LETTER: Concerns with the Application Process for the Special Immigration Measure for Gaza

The special immigration measure that our caucus called for on December 4, 2023, opened on January 9. It is riddled with problems. At the outset, nobody knew when the online portal would open. The arbitrary quota for applications only heightened anxiety as people felt that they had to compete with others for limited spots.

Immigration, Refugees, and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) has not been proactive or clear in communicating with applicants and has been largely incapable of answering any questions about their files. Many people who completed the first stage of the application are still waiting to receive a code that will allow them to proceed and IRCC cannot explain why some people who applied on January 9 received a code quickly and others still have not. Others have been rejected without any explanation from IRCC or for reasons that were later contradicted. People have been rejected and then subsequently approved with the exact same application.

To highlight the absurdity of the situation, one family was told only two weeks after their application was rejected that the reason was due to a missing ‘notary seal or stamp’ even though no stamp is required by law in British Columbia. Notwithstanding, the application was in fact stamped. The applicant did resubmit with the stamp on a gold seal so that it’s more visible to the scan, but IRCC then approved the original application anyway.

 

CIMM#90: Briefing on Migrant Trafficking and Smuggling

Jenny Kwan Vancouver East, BC

I think it would be useful to have that. Seeing as the specific study of the motion is to talk about Mexico, I think it would be useful to have that information. We know that migrant workers, temporary foreign workers with a closed work permit, are subject to abuse, and this is an ongoing issue that I know the minister is aware of and the committee is as well.

From that perspective, there have been ongoing reports. In a recent report in Ontario, I think some 67 migrant workers were subject to abuse in that regard, but it's not the only example. There are many. I won't bother citing all of them. Many people have said over and over again that the reality is that, when people are subject to a closed work permit environment, they are actually at a severe disadvantage and are subject to exploitation.

I know that there's a system whereby the people themselves can report and go through the ministry to apply for an open work permit as vulnerable workers. Will the minister consider providing open work permits to people from the beginning—so that they're not having to face exploitation and then seek recourse—to be more proactive and pre-emptive in the face of this ongoing situation?

Marc Miller Ville-Marie—Le Sud-Ouest—Île-des-Soeurs, QC

It's something that we're definitely looking into. Obviously, we want to deal with the exploitation as it occurs, regardless of the conditions that people are in. It is clear that, when you have a closed work permit, it does make you more vulnerable. It makes you more hesitant to report abuse and take action, and it gives you less of an ability to move from one place to another.

Looking at the next policy options we have in our tool kit is something that both I and Minister Boissonnault are looking at intensely. I think it's something that we will be working to fix in the coming months.

Globe: Organized crime, including Mexican cartels, smuggling migrants to Canada

Asked by NDP immigration critic Jenny Kwan about the exploitation of migrant workers who are tied to their employers, Mr. Miller said he was looking at reforming closed work permits, and was working with Employment Minister Randy Boissonnault on changes that may be unveiled within months.

HANSARD: Question on removing the immigration cap for Palestinian Canadian families