NDP immigration critic Jenny Kwan urged the government to introduce special immigration levels to give the 500,000 migrant workers already in Canada a path to settlement and help address the labour-skill shortage.
Jenny Kwan, the Vancouver East MP, who also acts as the NDP Immigration Critic, said the government is actually scaling back the Federal Skilled Workers Program by almost 50 per cent by shifting resources and immigration levels from one stream to another.
“The immigration levels released today shows that the government is perpetuating the problems they created when they failed to adjust the levels to accommodate the new (temporary to permanent resident pathway) immigration measure,” she said.
MP Jenny Kwan, who represents the riding of Vancouver East, has been lobbying for Chinatown to become a UNESCO World Heritage Site, which would deem it an international landmark with legal protection and could help secure the funding to preserve and maintain its streets.
Vancouver East MP Jenny Kwan, the NDP Critic for Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship, said a better way to reduce IRCC’s backlog and processing times is to put additional staffing resources to process applications and expand the immigration levels.
“The government cannot continue to rob Peter to pay Paul by taking resources and immigration levels from one stream and reallocating it to another. All that does is create further problems and chaos in the system,” Kwan told NCM.
NDP MP Jenny Kwan (Vancouver East, B.C.), her party’s immigration critic, said she’s never seen an instance of the government not sharing information in terms of a policy that impacts the public. She understands that specific details about which groups the government might be working with or what their strategy is on the ground in Afghanistan needs to be kept private for security purposes.
“But if there is flexibility with the current situation then we need to know what is that flexibility and how would it apply? Because at this stage, we don’t know. We’re all shooting in the dark,” she said.
With housing prices skyrocketing under the Liberal government, more than ever, Canadians need affordable housing in this country. There must be transparency in the advancement of the right to housing. There must be someone holding the government to account on their promises to address the housing crisis people are facing across the country. The Liberals cannot be sweep yet another unfulfilled campaign promise under the rug.
Additionally, I am concerned that the Minister seems to be satisfied with the processing of family reunification applications. The backlog for outbound family reunification applications are significantly delayed, including the reunification of children of asylum seekers. For these refugee families, the current wait times in processing now reach upwards of two to three years for dependents of refugee, far from any processing service standards.
Jenny Kwan, NDP immigration critic, said while she is glad to hear the government is finally taking action to address the immigration backlog, these problems have existed for a very long time.
In an interview, she noted that Fraser excluded the need to address family reunification with respect to the backlogs.
The minister needs to create service standards for all industries and not only some, she said, adding that applicants in the caregiver stream do not receive timelines for processing their application.
NDP MP Jenny Kwan (Vancouver East, B.C.), her party’s immigration critic, told The HillTimes that, despite having an awareness of what was to come in Afghanistan, the Canadian government did not adequately prepare.
“The situation has been chaotic right from the get-go,” she said.
NDP immigration critic Jenny Kwan said the skilled worker program is an important immigration stream for Canada and the current pause “will not only put people’s lives in limbo, but result in missed opportunities for Canada, risking that applicants may choose to emigrate to another country that recognizes their talent and experience.”
“Failing to address the backlogs will ultimately create more work for immigration as documents expire and the circumstances of applicants change. It will also fuel additional inquiries by applicants because they are concerned about a lack of progress in their applications. All of this serves only to further tie up the department’s resources.”