Lawyers plan Lawsuit against application refusals

On March, 2012 the Government had made an announcement to return the all the immigrant applications submitted after February, 2008.  This would have affected 300,000 aspiring applicants and an amount of $130 million would have refunded to them, which they had submitted as “processing fee”.

This announcement had come with the 2012 Federal Budget and was made to reduce the national deficit by increasing the efficiency of immigration process. Citizenship and Immigration Canada had planned to reduce the operating costs by $179 million in the name of processing cost.

Officials had also felt that the “soft immigration policy” is making the nation reachable by all; hence somewhere the quality is getting compromised.

The Government strongly feels that the reduction in the number of applications will help Canada to pick up good talents from the foreign countries.

The legislation would have become a law in a couple of days, the immigrant lawyers have decided to move the courts.

These lawyers have started a campaign which is aimed at reversing the announcement an allowing the processing of all the applications submitted before February of 2008.

As of now, the implementation of the legislation has come to halt for another three months as per a negotiation between the Federal Government and the Lawyers. Meanwhile, they are getting prepared to file a lawsuit.

During this period the Immigration Department would not be able to refund or refuse the old applications in spite of the Bill being passed.

Alexis Pavlich, Kenney’s spokeswoman said, the government looks forward to Bill C-38 coming into force as scheduled and there are no plans to change the timeline.” She meant the timeline of refunds and elimination of the backlog.

Even in the past the nation has seen such moves getting defeated. In 2003, in a similar suit Ottawa had to agree to process the visas.

Lawyers even consider this legislation “ill advised”.

In spite of filing a suit lawyers realize that this time the case is little different as the implementation is done through amending the laws.

They also discourage this move of the government by saying that the government should have acted four years back when these applicants had first approached for their visas. Now it is a complete wastage of time and resources. Layers strongly believe that these immigrants should treat with dignity.