Last Monday, Citizenship and Immigration Minister Joe Volpe announced changes to Canada’s immigration system. Seventy two million dollars has been allocated to triple the number of parents and grandparents that will be admitted to Canada during each of the next two years. as a further bone that is being tossed to their Canadian sponsors, parents and grandparents will be granted multiple entry visas so that they may visit Canada while their cases are being processed.
Rule changes have also been announced that will make it easier for foreign students to come to Canada. The students will, for the first time, be allowed to work off campus while they study. The time period that they can remain in Canada to work after graduation has been increased from one to two years, provided that they live and work in areas other than Montreal, Toronto or Vancouver. The government is also allocating $69 million to clear the backlog of outstanding applications for citizenship.
Now the money that the government is proposing to spend is not the issue. Seventy-two million; sixty-nine million; the Liberal government steals more than that in a good year.
These changes to the processing of immigration and citizenship cases are the best evidence yet that an election is expected this spring. It is a far truer indicator of the reality that this minority government will fall than is the on again, off again, threats by the opposition to force an election.
Liberals are no doubt more in danger of losing the ethnic vote that they traditional take than at any time in the past. Many people have come here from third world countries with rampant corruption, only to find the federal government engaging in theft, kickbacks and other activities that they thought they had left behind. More importantly, many immigrants to Canada are not quite as secular as the government would like them to be and oppose the Liberals’ stand on same sex marriage. So courting the ethnic vote is more important now that it has been it the past and the immigration changes were nothing more than a blatant attempt to buy votes.
as has been pointed out, the Liberals have had years to clear backlogs in the immigration and citizenship system and have done nothing until now when there is a clear and present danger to Paul Martin’s government falling. and the backlogs that they have chosen to reduce are those that appeal to ethnic communities as opposed to Canadians generally. There were no announcements that the government has any intention of trying to reduce the backlog of those who have been ordered to leave Canada but have not yet been removed. Nor does the government seem too concerned about the thousands of illegals, including many dangerous criminals, who have simply disappeared.
No, the government’s priority is to bring more parents and grandparents to Canada and add more elderly people to the swelling ranks of Canada’s aging baby boomers. The parents and grandparents of citizens and permanent residents, with their productive years behind them, will take more out of the system than they will ever contribute. Suddenly the serious lack of resources of Canada’s healthcare system and other social services doesn’t seem important to the Liberals. Only the next election does.
If the Liberals were really concerned about the country, they would put their resources into bringing in more skilled workers and ensuring that those who already here can use the skills that they have.
Fifty or sixty years ago, if a young person left asia or africa and sailed to Canada, unless their parents eventually followed them they would never see them again. Now the biggest obstacle to families visiting each other is going through security at the airport. Too much emphasis is being put on family reunification and not enough on acquiring the skills of younger workers. These changes were made for no other reason than to buy votes.
The Liberals love using immigration as an election issue because it is virtually impossible for the opposition to criticize it. any criticism of allowing more elderly grandparents into the country at the expense of younger workers is met with calls of "racist" and "bigot" to the cheers of the politically correct masses. Immigration is an election issue where the Liberals simply can’t lose.
The Liberals will go on insisting that their proposed immigration and citizenship changes have absolutely nothing to do buying votes. These are the same guys that never stole any money either.