But even as thousands of Somali refugees line up behind her at the Nairobi visa office, fleeing that country's worst famine in 60 years, critics fear she and others will wait even longer as the federal government opens the door to more and more economic immigrants - and closes it on refugees and family members.
Immigration Minister Jason Kenney is in Montreal on Friday to speak to "stakeholders" about how to achieve the right balance between economic and family-class immigrants, and the protected persons who are accepted into Canada every year.
It is by all accounts a difficult balance to strike in the context of an aging population, a chronic shortage of skilled workers, and long waiting lists for every class of immigrant.
There are now more than 1 million applicants waiting to be processed around the world.
But it is not clear who will be participating at consultations across the country, or if their voices will be heard.
A spokesperson for the minister said the list of participants will be released, along with the summary report, only after stakeholder and online public consultations are complete.
Some of the more obvious candidates were not invited to attend - for example, the Conseil du patronat du Québec (the largest Quebec employers lobby), the Fédération des chambres de commerce du Québec, the Board of Trade of Metropolitan Montreal, and FERME (Foundation des entreprises en recrutement de main-d'oeuvre agricole etrangère), the agency in charge of recruiting and placing foreign temporary workers on Quebec farms.
"We would have liked to be invited, but generally they don't follow our recommendations anyway," said René Mantha, president of FERME, still smarting from the government's decision to limit the time foreign agricultural workers can work in Canada to 48 months (unless they are Mexican and hence governed by a separate accord).
On Kenney's watch, the number of temporary workers coming to Canada every year has ballooned, Mantha agreed - from 139,000 in 2006 to 182,276 in 2010 - but the demand for them on farms and in greenhouses and fisheries has grown even more.
Among those who have been invited to the two-hour session with Kenney on Friday are the Canadian Council for Refugees and the Quebec Immigration Lawyers Association, both of whom said they were happy to be consulted, but skeptical as to the results.
"We are concerned that refugees and families and children are not priorities and they are hurting because the government has decided to respond instead to the demand from employers for temporary workers," said the CCR's Janet Dench.
"It's understandable that a factory owner doesn't want to wait three years, but is it correct to say this is a higher priority than reuniting a child with her mother?"
Nasteha's mother, Zeynab, was living in a refugee camp in Kenya when she gave birth in April 2008.
She was resettled in Canada two months later, but was told to leave Nasteha behind or she wouldn't be admitted. Zeynab was finally able to apply to sponsor Nasteha in 2011. According to the current processing delays at the Nairobi visa office - 31 months - Nasteha may have to wait until August 2013, after she has turned 5, before she sees her mother again.
"We appreciate that the government is under pressure from different sides and it's a difficult job to choose from all those factors," Dench said.
"But in the last few years, economic interests, particularly the interests of employers, have been the main priority for the government and we've seen a dramatic decrease in family class (applicants) and refugees."
Dan Bohbot, president of the Quebec Immigration Lawyers Association, says he believes the delays in Nairobi and elsewhere, for children and parents and grandparents, are a consequence of the choices made by the Conservative government to emphasize enforcement over reunification. He cited the announcement lass Wednesday that the government would rescind the citizenship of 1,800 people suspected of fraud - people who essentially faked their residence in Canada.
"No one wants to accept fraud," Bohbot said. "But it can take up to seven years for parents and grandparents to come to Canada (as sponsored immigrants) and we are told there are no means to process them because there are too many of them.
"But (the government) is taking the time and effort to look at these fraud cases. It is a question of philosophy."
Origin
Source: Montreal Gazette
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