Canada's Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism, Jason Kenney (Hon), sat down for an exclusive interview with The South Asian Post's Jagdeesh Mann. He discussed the impact of recent policy change announcements, in particular concerning the family re-unifcation program and Canada's new impending super-visa.

SAP: You have been simultaneously applauded and criticised for your recent announcement on changes to the parent/ grandparent re-unification program. How do you respond to this ambiguous reception?

JK: We inherited a huge immigration backlog of 850,000 files in 2006 with 110,00 files in the grandparents program. Since that time it has since grown to 165,000 files in the parent/ grandparent queue. This is a 7 to 8 year wait-time, which is just unacceptable.
If we effectively do nothing on this program, by the end of this decade will have backlog of 350,000 with a 20-year wait-time. Some changes have to be made.
The problem is that every year we have been receiving far more applications for immigration to Canada than we are able to admit as immigrants. This dates back to 2001, to the previous government policy to process every application Canada receives. So every year, the previous government was accepting 450,000 applications but admitting only 220,000 people which means they were overselling slots by about 2 to 1.
This was happening in the parents program which was receiving about 40,000 applications per year and in some years, as many as 50,000.
But on average, the government, however, was admitting only 17,000 people per year. So obviously this is a math problem.

SAP: So aside from wanting to reduce the backog, what is this government's stance on family re-unification?

JK: The bottom line is we are committed to family reunification. We want family members to be reunited much more quickly.
That is why we have made his decision to massively increase the number of parents who can immigrate by 60% - from 15,000 to 25,000 - and to place a temporary pause on new applications.
These two measures alone will allow us to cut the backlog by half for when the program re-opens in two years time.
In the interim, we will consult with Canadians of all backgrounds on how to redesign the parents program so that it is fast, fair, and sustainable in the future and on how to better manage incoming applications to avoid this huge problem.

SAP: As of December 1, the new parents ten-year super-visa will allow grandparents and parents to stay for two years at a time, so long as they have private health insurance. How will the process to obtain the new super-visa differ from the current visa process. Will it expedite the process?

JK: We have been advised by many peopple in Asian communities that their parents and grandparents do not want to immigrate permanently but what they want is to come for extended stays so they can be with their children and grandchildren. They want to come for a certain period of time. But otherwise, they are comfortable where they are as they don't speak English and their other friends and relatives are back home.
So we are trying to provide more flexible alternative to permanent residency, one that moves faster and has a higher approval rate.
To qualify, applicants will have to go through the regular checks.
They will have to be medically admissible - they cannot have a serious pre-existing medical condition. Secondly, the family who's hosting them on this side, must show they have adequate income to sustain the parents & grandparents during their extended stay - that is $17,000 for a single individual and $30,000 for a family of five.
And thirdly, they must show when they arrive at the port of entry here, they have obtained a comprehensive health insurance policy for the duration of their stay thereby reducing the risk to Canadian taxpayers. Overall they must also be admissible by all of the existing standards, including criminal checks of course - the only thing which is new is the private health coverage.
We are confident the government will be able to process these visa applicants in 8 weeks or less.

SAP: There seems to be a new emphasis on citizens having fluency in one of our official langauges - why is the government pushing so stridently to make mandatory the requirement for third-party language testing for all citizenship applicants?

JK: Lets start by making a distinction between citizenship and immigration. The Citizenship Act has always required that applicants for citizenship demonstrate a knowledge of Canada and an ability to speak English or French. It has always been there.
The problem is this requirement has never been consistently tested. There are too many people who have managed to get citizenship with no proficiency in either language. Bear in mind, that people over age 55 and under the age of 19 are exempt from the language requirements. So basically it's for people who should have the capacity to learn. If you are going to become a full participating member of Canadian society, with the right to run for public office, and the right to vote, you require the ability to communicate in one of our official languages.
We think that is entirely reasonable.
By the way our government has tripled the federal money available to funding language classes and other settlement services. Passing people into citizenship who cannot speak one of the official languages is like passing a kid through high school who is getting failing grade. You are not doing anyone any favours.

SAP: And will this language requirement be extended to include immigration applicants?

JK: In terms of immigration, nothing has really changed. Only a tiny fraction of our immigrants are assessed for language proficiency - about 2 out of 10 immigrants who are selected based on their working capital, including language.
63% of immigrants are family members of primary applicants, eg. spouses, children, parents, and grandparents - all of whom are exempted.
All refugees are exempted. Provincial nominees do not have a minimal language benchmark.
Having said that, all of the data on immigration shows that people with higher levels of English proficiency do better during their stay. That is not to say that people with low levels of language proficiency cannot succeed, but statistically, people with higher levels of language proficiency do better. The number one reason that companies say they don't hire immigrants, for example and according to the data, is due to low levels of language proficiency.
For immigration, only in the case of economic immigrants, we may want in the future to put more emphasis on language proficiency, especially for people in licensed professions. The problem with credential recognition is often tied to language proficiency. So for this small 20% class of economic applicants who are aspiring to higher-level jobs, we may seek a higher requirement on English.