I am often approached by people who wish to extend their stay in Canada as visitors, workers or students and have questions about their immigration status that are about to expire.
On July 2, 2015 the BC PNP program re-opened their business immigration category for entrepreneurial applicants. The new system requires prospective applicants to pre-register with an online profile that will allow the provincial government to quickly assess registrants based upon a number of criteria. A scoring component is used to select those applicants with the highest scores will be given an Invitation to Apply (ITA), which is required to submit a business application to the BC PNP office. Let's review the scoring criteria to see how to get that pivotal ITA!
Discretion has always played a significant part in Canada’s immigration system. Historically immigration officers have been able to use their discretion to assess people’s skills, qualifications, and language abilities in considering various criteria for immigration or citizenship applications. However in recent years there has been a consistent trend to eliminate an officer’s ability to subjectively assess applicants and instead reply on objective third party assessments.
The media was abuzz last week with several examples of people who had their citizenship applications rejected for failing to provide adequate proof of english language proficiency. The particular injustice highlighted in these refusals was that in these cases the individuals were born in the U.K. and had spent almost their entire lives in Canada pursuing their educations and careers in English in Canada yet had their applications refused for failing to provide acceptable proof of their language ability.
The topic of illegal workers has been featured prominently in the news recently with Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) in Vancouver conducting raids on several construction sites with television cameras in tow. This has drawn considerable media attention and has resulted in the BC Civil Liberties Association filing a formal complaint with the Privacy Commissioner against CBSA for filming migrant workers for a reality television series.
People often ask me what the most serious immigration infraction is. They expect that I will say something like, “working illegally, living underground without status, or being deported” but actually it’s the consequences for misrepresentation. The Immigration Refugee Protection Act (IRPA) sets out the criteria for misrepresentation as well as the penalties which are significant and can include loss of status, permanent separation from family members, fines and even jail time. Furthermore the trend in the past few years for Canada Immigration is a zero tolerance policy towards misrepresentation with penalties likely to increase.
Minister Kenney delivered a one – two punch on December 10 and 11 by opening up the federal skilled trades stream for permanent residence and fast tracking the eligibility requirements for Canadian Experience Class applicants.
Sas and Ing Immigration Law Centre LLP
A partnership between Catherine Sas Law Corporation and Victor Ing Law Corporation
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