The turtle-paced movement of the Canadian Embassy in Manila, The Philippines to process both immigration and working visas may finally come to its end as more Canadian immigration personnel are added and the existing office is expanded.

Canada’s Citizenship and Immigration Minister Diane Finley announced last week that more immigration officers will be sent to the Manila visa office to speed up the processing of applications. It is estimated this initiative will incur a one-time construction cost of approximately $1.9 million.

“Our government supports the Filipino community in Canada,” said Minister Finley. “There has been a longstanding concern that processing times needed to improve. Today, we are taking action and committing more resources to help applicants from The Philippines.”

“This is a welcome development for all of us,” Philippine Ambassador to Canada Jose Brillantes told the Asian Pacific Post.

The issue to improve processing times has been repeatedly raised during his meetings with various Filipino Canadian organizations and was echoed to the government of Canada. 

However, Brillantes admitted that the Philippine government, through its Department of Foreign Affairs, could not in any way “directly” seek changes in Canada’s own immigration policies pertaining to visa processing. “It would be very undiplomatic for us to ask changes in the immigration policies of Canada which may be construed as an intervention to Canada’s internal affairs,” said Brillantes.

The number of temporary workers coming to Canada from around the world has soared in recent years in an effort to meet this country’s labour market needs.

In 2006, Canada welcomed 8,529 temporary foreign workers from The Philippines. This number is expected to continue to grow in response to increasing demands from Canadian employers for temporary workers.

Last month, British Columbia signed an agreement with the Philippines government that will give it priority over other jurisdictions in Canada and the world in a bid to attract Filipino workers as a way of coping with labour shortages.

B.C. Minister of Economic Development Colin Hansen signed a two-year memorandum of understanding with Philippine Labour Secretary Arturo Brion.

This will lead to the establishment of a so-called joint labour committee with members from both sides who will hammer out specific guidelines for training, certifying and assessing both employees in The Philippines and employers in B.C.

Although the B.C. government has said that the province needs to attract 30,000 workers per year with specific skills from outside B.C., Hansen said that there is no exact target number, in particular, for workers from The Philippines. The agreement will, however, focus first on helping B.C. companies in the tourism, hospitality and construction industries.

Foreign Affairs and International Trade Canada will reconfigure existing offices and add new space at the Canadian Embassy to accommodate Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC) program needs.

Beginning in the summer, CIC will add three additional Canada-based immigration officers and four locally-engaged staff members to work at the Embassy. More CIC staff could be added the following year.

The increase in staff is intended to address the increased volume of Temporary Foreign Worker applications while at the same time ensuring that processing times for other lines of service are also improved.

The Philippines is one of the biggest exporters of skilled and unskilled labor in the world. The Southeast Asian nation deployed more than one million Overseas Filipino Workers (OFWs) to 160 host destinations last year, most of them in medical and health, information and technology, and services sectors.

About eight million Filipinos, or 10 per cent of the population, are working abroad while their remittances last year were estimated at more than $10 billion, or 10 per cent of The Philippines’ GDP.

Based on the 2006 Census of Canada released recently, The Philippines was the third highest source of immigrants to Canada in the world, and has consistently been in the top five since 1981.

“We are one of the fastest-growing immigrant communities in Canada, yet our issues remain virtually invisible,” said Cecilia Diocson, Executive Director of the National Alliance of Philippine Women in Canada, in a press statement. According to the NAPWC, the chronic economic and political crises in The Philippines, including the current state of civil war and the lack of jobs, pushes over some 34,000 Filipinos abroad daily in search of a better life.
It is estimated that there are around 500,000 Filipinos living in Canada, concentrated in the major cities of Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal.

“Although we have been migrating to this country for the last 40 years, we remain economically marginalized and segregated,” said Diocson. She pointed to the example of the nearly 100,000 Filipino women who have entered Canada since the early 1980s under Citizenship and Immigration Canada’s Live-in Caregiver Program (LCP).

“The LCP as Canada’s de-facto national childcare program has resulted in many women suffering a lifetime of de-skilling and all forms of abuse,” said Diocson.

For more information on CIC’s processing times, visit: www.cic.gc.ca.