Immigration.ca - Canada Immigration News - October 2008
It may seem to many that this month’s Canadian elections have accomplished very little. As before, the Conservatives are still in power with a minority government that will need the cooperation of at least one of the other major political parties in order to pass any new legislation.
However, it does ensure that their new immigration policies, passed last spring, will be carried through. The policies include granting the Department of Citizenship and Immigration the power to decide which skilled worker applications should be processed in priority.
Many critics were highly vocal in their opposition to the policy changes. They argued that the new laws allow far too much discretionary power into the hands of the Immigration Department, headed by Minister Diane Finley.
However, some believe that changes to Canada’s immigration system were due, saying that the old points system for skilled workers had become a “victim of its own success.”
“The skilled worker class became so user-friendly […] that applicants filed their applications online in huge numbers, creating in the process a backlog of about one million applications waiting to be processed,” one advocate argues. “No system can withstand these enormous challenges and be efficient or even survive.”
The new policies are the government’s attempt at rectifying the backlog but some warn that an immigration system based solely on an applicant’s desirability in terms of the economic market could have a troubling impact on Canada’s demographic landscape.
It is now the responsibility of the government (and all serving members of the opposition parties) to ensure that these changes do not irreversibly damage Canada’s international reputation of fairness, transparency and balance – a reputation that is largely responsible for attracting immigrants to this nation in the first place.
Source: Ottawa Citizen
