Lobat Sadrehashemi joins Peter Edelmann, Deanna Okun-Nachoff and Steven Meurrens to discuss issues in Canada’s citizenship revocation and refugee determination processes. The recent controversy around Maryam Monsef guides our discussion. Lobat Sadrehashemi is an Associate Counsel at Embarkation Law Corporation. She is also the Vice President of the Canadian Association of Refugee Lawyers (“CARL“). CARL’s reform proposals for Canada’s inland refugee determination system and other aspects of the immigration system, which we recently submitted to the Ministers, their staff, IRCC, and the Immigration and Refugee Board can be found here. Lobat’s paper on Refugee Reform and Access to Counsel in British Columbia can be found here.
Government of Canada To Abolish Conditional Permanent Residency in 2017
On October 29, 2016, the Government of Canada announced that it would be abolishing the conditional permanent residency regime currently in place in the Family Class and the Spouse or Common-Law Partner in Canada Class. Since October, 2012, conditional permanent residency has applied to individuals who are the spouse, common-law, or conjugal partner of their sponsor for two years or less when they submit their sponsorship applications and who do not have children in common with their sponsor when they submit the sponsorship applications. Conditional permanent residents are required to cohabit in a conjugal relationship with their sponsors for a continuous period of two years after the day on which they become permanent residents. If Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (“IRCC“) determines that conditional permanent residents have breached the condition, then IRCC will declare them inadmissible to Canada, and removal proceedings will be initiated. An exception to this is where there is abuse. Conditional permanent residents are able to appeal such decisions to the Immigration Appeal Division, which can consider humanitarian & compassionate considerations. From 2013-2015, 58 218 spouses and partners along with their children were admitted to Canada as conditional permanent residents. This represented approximately 42% of admissions of spouses, partners, and their children within Canada’s family reunification programs. During … Read More
Borderlines Podcast Episode 7 – David Eby and Tom Davidoff on Vancouver’s Housing Market
On the 7th podcast episode, Tom Davidoff and David Eby joins Peter Edelmann and I to discuss Vancouver’s housing market. Tom Davidoff is an Associate Professor at the University of British Columbia’s Sauder School of Business. He is frequently cited in the Vancouver media as being an expert on Vancouver’s housing market, and was part of a team of nine academics who created the B.C. Housing Affordability Fund proposal. David Eby is the Member of the Legislative Assembly for Vancouver-Point Grey, and was previously the Executive Director of the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association. He is a passionate advocate for making Vancouver a more affordable place to live. What has been going on in the Vancouver housing market? How fast have prices been rising? Is there evidence that foreign investment / foreign funds has been the cause of the increase in Vancouver housing prices? What data is there regarding the amount of foreign home ownership in Vancouver? What is the property transfer tax, and what are the new rules on how it applies to foreign buyers? Is there evidence that high housing prices impacts the rental market? Does it matter if the landlord is a Canadian or a foreigner? Why should high … Read More
Priority Processing in LMIA Applications
Labour Market Impact Assessment (“LMIA“) applications typically take 1-4 months to process. However, the Department of Employment and Social Development Canada (“ESDC“) processes LMIAs for in-demand occupations (skilled trades), highly paid occupations (top 10%) or short-duration (120 days or less) entries within a 10 business day service standard. High-Demand To be considered a High-Demand LMIA, the position must be for a skilled trade on the list of eligible occupations below, and the wage being offered for the position must be at, or above, the provincial / territorial median wage where the job is located. Tables about unemployment, Median wages, 10-day speed of service. NOC 2006 NOC 2011 Occupation Title 7212 7202 Contractors and supervisors, electrical trades and telecommunications occupations 7215 7204 Contractors and supervisors, carpentry trades 7219 7205 Contractors and supervisors, other construction trades, installers, repairers and servicers 7271 7271 Carpenters 7216 7301 Contractors and supervisors, mechanic trades 7217 7302 Contractors and supervisors, heavy equipment operator crews 8211 8211 Supervisors, logging and forestry 8221 8221 Supervisors, mining and quarrying 8222 8222 Contractors and supervisors, oil and gas drilling services 8241 8241 Logging machinery operators 8252 / 8253 8252 Agricultural service contractors, farm supervisors and specialized livestock workers 9211 9211 Supervisors, mineral and … Read More
Who Do You Report To – Misrepresentation
I’m writing this post quickly after reading the Federal Court’s decision in Hehar v. Canada (Citizenship and Immigration), 2016 FC 1054. In the decision, Justice Brown writes: Naveen Kumar Verma gave radically different answers from those given by the Applicant during the verification process in response to the same two simple questions. First, in response to the question, “Who does she report to/Who do you report to,” two different individuals, with different job titles were named. I have never liked the “who do you report to” question. Prior to becoming a Partner at Larlee Rosenberg I theoretically could have given the name of either Peter Larlee or Ryan Rosenberg. If my Legal Assistant were to be asked “who does she report to” I could see her answering that it was either me or Ryan Rosenberg, the Managing Partner. Both answers would be correct. Contradictory answers to this question often result in great suspicion by visa officers that is difficult to overcome. And it really shouldn’t.
BC PNP September 1 Changes
On September 1, 2016, the British Columbia Provincial Nomination Program (“BC PNP“) published changes to its program guide. Here is a summary of the changes. Topic Original Change Representatives If you are invited to apply and your employer is using a representative, your employer must also complete their own use of representative form, even if your employer is appointing the same representative. If you are invited to apply and you are using a representative, your employer must also complete their own use of representative form, even if your employer is appointing the same representative. Refunds If invited to apply, you must submit the $550 application fee with your online application before your application will be processed. Incomplete applications will not be processed and fees may not be refunded. If invited to apply, you must submit the $550 application fee with your online application before your application will be processed. Incomplete applications will not be approved, and application fees will only be refunded if you withdraw your application before the BC PNP begins to assess it. You may contact the BC PNP at PNPinfo@gov.bc.ca to withdraw your application and find out if you are eligible for a refund. Please provide your … Read More
Corroborating Affidavits
It is not uncommon for refusal letters to contain some variation of the following statement: I find that letters or affidavits made by the applicant, who has a personal interest in this matter, require a degree of corroboration in order to contain much weight. As the Federal Court of Appeal held in Maldonado v Canada (Minister of Employment and Immigration), [1980] 2 FC 302 at para 5 (FCA), this is inappropriate. There, the Court noted that: When an applicant swears to the truth of certain allegations, this creates a presumption that those allegations are true unless there be reason to doubt their truthfulness. On this record, I am unable to discover valid reasons for the Board doubting the truth of the applicant’s allegations above referred to. In Hilo v Canada (Minister of Citizenship and Immigration), [1991] FCJ No 228 (FCA), the Court further noted that: The appellant was the only witness who gave oral testimony before the Board. His evidence was uncontradicted. The only comments as to his credibility are contained in the short passage quoted supra. That passage is troublesome because of its ambiguity. It does not amount to an outright rejection of the appellant’s evidence but it appears to cast … Read More
Stateless People in Canada
Justice Diner in Canada (Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness) v. Rooney discussed the issue of the lack of legislation dealing with stateless people in Canada. The relevant portions of his decision provide interesting commentary, and reads (citations removed for ease of reading): Imposing an obligation to prove a negative in these circumstances may give rise to a Catch-22 situation for the stateless, nameless, mentally ill, and other vulnerable individuals who may not be able to establish identity. While I do not contest the Member’s finding that the Respondent may not be de jure stateless as understood by international instruments, the issue of statelessness and persons unable to establish nationality merits comment. In a 2010 paper on de facto statelessness, Senior Legal Adviser to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees Hugh Massey explains that the inability to prove nationality may be linked to a number of causes, including the fact that “[s]ome people may have never been registered in the civil registration system of the country of their nationality.” Mr. Massey further notes the difficulty to establish nationality in the case of unaccompanied children, especially if the “child is so young as to be unable to provide any information at all about … Read More
Borderlines Podcast Episode 6 – Dani Willetts on the Transition from Working for CIC to being an Immigration Consultant
On the 6th podcast episode, Dani Willetts joins Peter Edelmann and I to discuss the decision making process at Canada’s immigration department, her experience transitioning from a career working for CIC to being an immigration consultant, some recent cases impacting international graduates in particular with regards to the Post-Graduate Work Permit program, a recent Parliamentary report on the Temporary Foreign Worker Program, and the discovery that Canada has started negotiating an extradition treaty with China. Dani Willetts is an immigration consultant at TDWImmigration. From 1989 – 2012 she worked in numerous capacities with Canada’s immigration department, including as a Supervisor in Vancouver. First, using three recent cases as examples we discussed how Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada officers view themselves. Do they see themselves as administering the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act or as administering Canadian immigration programs. Three recent cases from the Federal Court were used to guide our discussion. The first was Zhang v. Canada (Citizenship and Immigration), 2016 FC 964, where the Federal Court determined that a visa officer was correct when it determined that a person had engaged in unauthorized study in Canada while in Canada as a visitor. Ms. Zhang had arrived in Canada on a visitor’s visa on August 23, 2014, … Read More
Best Interests of the Child can Be Considered in Detention Reviews
The Canadian Council for Refugees (the “CCR“) has just distributed the following two PDFs to its followers. In brief, the Federal Court has issued an order saying that the best interests of non-detained children can be considered in detention reviews (e.g. of a parent who is accompanied in detention by a child who is in detention, but not legally detained). As copied from the CCR e-mail, the Order confirms that: the factors to be considered by the Immigration Division when deciding whether to detain or release are not limited to those enumerated under R. 248 of the Regulations; the Immigration Division has the jurisdiction to consider the interests of a child who is a Canadian at an immigration holding centre (i.e. residing there with her detained parent) even if that child is not under a detention order herself and therefore not directly subject to the Immigration Division’s jurisdiction; and the interests of a child may be taken into account (but are not a primary consideration) when determining whether a person is a flight risk. Also, according to the CCR, Canada Border Services Agency Hearings Officers have been instructed to bring this Order to the attention of Immigration Division members. The following instructions have also been provided to officers.