Old Age Security benefits denied to the Immigrants

Pension benefits denied to senior people staying in Canada for even more than three decades

The retirement Income system in Canada provides benefit to the senior citizens from the age of 65. This system requires the individual to have lived in the nation for a minimum period of 10 years. In some cases it may start at the age of 60 too, if the person belongs to low income category.

There are cases when immigrants who have been living in this country for the last more than 30 years have been denied a pension of $500 or even less per month.

In some cases pension seekers who have been staying here for last 40 years and have been serving as nurses and teachers, have been asked to submit the copy of plane ticket when they landed 40 years back. On some other occasion they have been asked to submit a copy of all the travel documents entailing their movement in and outside Canada.

These people have been paying their taxes regularly for the last 03 or more years, yet they are questioned about their existence in Canada.

Some people strongly express that the Government is trying to save money by being strict on scrutiny whereas other are apprehensive about the change of receiving pension from the age of 67 rather than getting the same from 65.

More than 350,000 applications will be submitted for OAS, out of which 3% is likely to be rejected on the basis of residency status.

According to a data, the cost of OAS payments is about $30 billion per year which serves benefit to about 5 million Canadians.

Maisonneuve, Spokesperson Service Canada says, “An applicant may be asked to provide documents related to departures and entries into Canada to prove the residency status in the nation.”

He also informs that, the amount of pension depends upon the number of years of stay in Canada; hence the residency proof is very important.

Experts in this field suggest that it is important to verify the residency status of a pension seeker but, to ask for arrival plane ticket is a weird. They opine that the tax return documents should be sufficient to prove the stay of a citizen in the nation.

Form a practical view point it would be difficult for the golden age people to procure and produce any landing documents now after more than 30 years of their stay in Canada, in spite of paying the taxes without any fail.