Tough times being used by Canada to restructure immigration system

Sabir Mohammed Sheikh and Seema Sheikh, both residents of Montreal, recently discovered how serious Canada is when it says that refugee applicants should be truthful while making claims.

They only tried to hide their long stay in Dubai as expatriates prior to coming to Canada. But may be Canada should have granted them stay in the country by overlooking the small mistake, since Dubai does not provides citizenship to its expatriates and the couple may well face violence if they go back to Pakistan. I personally believe that their separation from their four children in Montreal, one being just five-year old born in Canada only, was very un-Canadian.

But deducing something out of this would also be wrong as Canada is the only immigrant-receiving country which has allowed the same number of newcomers to the country even under these hard times. As per the International Migration Outlook 2009 reports by the OECD, almost all it member countries have reduced intake of newcomers and some like Japan, Czech Republic, and Spain have even offered money to immigrants to go back to their country.

Canada in this regard is way above these countries. The government here is trying to use the tough economic situation as a time to restructure the country’s approach to immigration and reduce the factors that tend to bring ‘not-so-good’ immigrants and professionals to Canada. It is with this intent in mind that Canada recently announced visa rules for citizens of Czech Republic and Mexico. One can just hope these measures help in achieving the goal and make the immigration system ill-free.