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| Subject: Immigration changes pass in parliament |
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Tories survive confidence vote on immigration proposals
Last Updated: Wednesday, April 9, 2008 | 6:22 PM ET
CBC News
The Conservative government easily survived a confidence vote Wednesday after the Liberals said they´re not prepared to hang an election on proposed immigration reforms.
The House of Commons voted 201-68 against an NDP motion declaring that the government´s budget implementation bill should not be allowed to proceed. The proposed immigration changes are contained in the budget bill.
Liberals have denounced the proposed immigration changes as regressive and anti-immigrant. But Liberal immigration critic Maurizio Bevilacqua said his party wants to further study the amendments and will have other opportunities to defeat the legislation if necessary.
Backlog reaching a million: Tories
The Conservatives have said the changes to the Immigration Act will help deal with a backlog of 925,000 immigration applications.
The measures would give the immigration minister the authority to decide which type of applicants will get processed first, such as doctors. Once a quota is met, the unprocessed applications will be returned. Currently, all applications are processed.
An immigration official who briefed reporters on the changes Tuesday confirmed prospective immigrants could apply year after year and never have an application processed because they´ve missed the quota.
The senior official said the changes don´t allow immigrant applicants to be targeted because of race, religion or language.
The official suggested applicants such as doctors and those waiting to be reunited with family members already in Canada could be on the fast-track list. The government will consult with provinces and industry and table any "favoured-status" list in Parliament, said the official.
In question period on Wednesday, Liberal Leader St?phane Dion accused the government of "replacing open arms with closed doors."
"Why is the prime minister trying to get rid of the principles of fairness and objectivity? Why does he want to replace them by abusive powers at the hands of the minister?" said Dion.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper responded that the Tories were ending the "preferential practices" of the previous Liberal government that led to the backlog and restoring fairness to the system.
"These measures are important to immigrants, they´re important to our economy," Harper said. "That´s why they are a confidence measure, and I look forward to seeing whether the leader of the opposition believes his own rhetoric on this."
NDP immigration critic Olivia Chow said the proposed measures won´t be charter-compliant and accused the Tories of "crumbling and killing the entire system" to replace it with their own plan.
The Conservatives say unless changes are made, the backlog of immigrant applications will grow to 1.5 million within four years.
In extreme situations, some processing times currently exceed six years. The changes would apply to cases opened after Feb. 27, 2008, and the objective is to have them processed within six to 12 months.
[09-04-2008,21:01]
[**.155.160.37]
Sharon |
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(in reply to: Immigration changes pass in parliament)
Hi,
I think a person applying on Jan 1st of any year will have best chance.
Webmaster,
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[09-04-2008,23:05]
[***.112.86.85]
nomlah |
WORRIED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (in reply to: Immigration changes pass in parliament)
what will happen to family cases applied after 27 of feb 2008 ( parents and dependent brother sister)
[10-04-2008,00:18]
[**.12.24.232]
harmeet |
(in reply to: Immigration changes pass in parliament)
The amendments are not intended to affect the objectives related to family reunification. Focus is on skilled workers, where wait times are long and growing.
http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/department/laws-policy/irpa-questions.asp
[10-04-2008,00:33]
[**.58.78.47]
Edu |
(in reply to: Immigration changes pass in parliament)
Too much power corrupts---period. Too many of my colleagues who have been in business for years knows that this is a very sad day in Canada.
Edu when you look at the History of changes to the Act you will be better informed. Denise Codere former Minister of CIC stopped all processing of Parental Sponsorships for eighteen months and never even told his own parties MP´s.
When the Gazette comes out I think that you will see how the changes will affect parental sponsorships and cases as Mike´s father.
I normally think positive all the time but experience and politicians are too thinks that make me negative in this situation.
When one has clients they care about who have been waiting for years it would be silly not to worry.
Roy
www.cvimmigration.com
[10-04-2008,09:54]
[**.52.219.32]
Roy |
(in reply to: Immigration changes pass in parliament)
"The changes would apply to cases opened after Feb. 27, 2008, and the objective is to have them processed within six to 12 months". Opened after Feb. 27, 2008 or received after Feb. 27, 2008?
[10-04-2008,10:09]
[***.78.160.12]
Immigrant |
(in reply to: Immigration changes pass in parliament)
Hi Roy
so what you think there are chances that this law will effect parental sponsorship negatively.( not as it is clamied it will be fast tracked).plz reply
[10-04-2008,10:13]
[**.12.24.232]
harmeet |
(in reply to: Immigration changes pass in parliament)
I don´t think anyone really knows and the legislation could still go through revisions as it moves through the final process of becoming law. Our system of creating laws are very long and complicated.
I think the best we can do is sit tight and wait to see what the final document and regulations look like.
I have been following this conversation on another forum and the consensus there is that we simply do not know at this tims what the full impacts are going to be.
[10-04-2008,14:59]
[**.155.160.37]
Sharon |
