In an interview with iPolitics, Kenney said he is looking at ways to deal with the problem of “astronauts” — people who obtain Canadian permanent resident status but then spend most of their time living and working outside of Canada — often in countries like China with much lower income taxes.
“We’re looking at all sorts of different ideas,” said Kenney candidly. “One concept is that it is a contradiction to be a non-resident permanent resident. That if you’re going to be a non-resident you should lose your permanent residency.”
Kenney’s comments come only a few days after he announced that the government is investigating an estimated 11,000 permanent residents and new Canadian citizens on suspicion that they lied about living in Canada. In most of those cases, the government discovered the possible fraud as a result of investigations into crooked immigration consultants, hired to make it look like a permanent resident or citizenship applicant was spending their time in Canada.
However, Kenney acknowledged it is more difficult to pinpoint another type of case, where a family obtains permanent resident status then the wife and children live in Canada but the husband largely lives and works in their home country.
“Right now the rule is that to maintain your permanent residency you have to live here for two out of five years,” Kenney explained. “But we are aware of massive fraud in that area.”
“We’re looking at all these issues, consulting with practitioners, law enforcement agencies, looking at international experience, trying to figure out how do you ensure that people actually do what they are supposed to. To do what the law requires of them.”
The practice also raises the issue of whether permanent residents engaging in the practice are benefitting from the Canadian system without helping fund it, Kenney added.
“The problem is from a Canadian interest point of view that the family are typically going to be using Canadian tax-funded public services without paying their share into the system,” Kenney explained.
“I would characterize China, for example, as a tax haven. It may not be a zero-tax jurisdiction like the United Arab Emirates but tax rates in China and Hong Kong are massively lower than in Canada.”
“These are issues we are looking at. How do we ensure that people who are going to become citizens are actually contributing meaningfully to the country – at least paying their fair share.”
Exit tracking
One way the government is planning to crack down on permanent residents misrepresenting the amount of time they have spent in Canada is by introducing an exit information system, said Kenney.
Currently Canada records when someone enters the country but it does not record when someone exits. One exception is a pilot project in which Canada and the U.S. exchange entry data, which results in each country having exit data as well.
“This would massively improve our ability to police our borders, to remove people who are illegally in Canada, because we’ll know that they are here, and to police residency fraud. In the future, under the exit information system, when permanent residents are leaving the country they will have to swipe their PR card on the way out and then of course on the way back in so we will know electronically exactly how many days they spent in Canada.”
“So that’s the perfect remedy but it will take us a couple of years to get to that.”
Kenney said the government still has to get legislative approval for the move and to overcome operational challenges such as the computer system and hardware necessary to run it.
“The biggest challenge in an exit information system is how it applies to the land border.”
Biometric visas, using fingerprints and digital photos, will be in place shortly — initially for higher risk countries, he added.
“One of the problems we have had is people, when they are removed from Canada, getting fake biographic data, fake documents and coming back in on those. So we will be able to stop that with biometrics.”
Kenney said the United Kingdom, Australia and the United States have introduced biometric visas and the European Union is headed in the same direction.
“It is really the new normal in immigration systems. In this day and age, with the technology, there’s no reason why we should just be relying on paper documents. It is so easy for people to fake those.”
Protecting the integrity of Canada’s citizenship and immigration system in a bid to maintain public support for it is one of two central themes that Kenney says guides his actions as immigration minister.
Labour to market
The second is to better align the immigration system with Canada’s economic realities and its labour market.
“The second major theme of our reforms is a fundamental reform of the selection of economic immigrants to improve the economic outcomes of immigration for Canada and to substantially improve economic results for newcomers. It’s paradoxical that we’re bringing all these newcomers to Canada and that immigrants are facing an unemployment rate that is twice as high as within the general Canadian population.”
“We’ve seen a 30-year decline in incomes and employment levels for immigrants in an economy with acute labour shortages. This makes no sense.”
The problem, says Kenney, is that for many years Canada’s immigration system favoured those with university educations and professional credentials – regardless of whether that education and those credentials could be recognized in Canada.
“In other words, it’s all well and good to invite someone to Canada with a masters degree from a university in a third world country,” Kenney explained. “But if it is never recognized as such by Canadian employers and if in fact they seek to enter a regulated profession but are found not to meet the Canadian standards as an engineer, doctor, lawyer, etc, then those people with high levels of education end up working in survival jobs or being underemployed, experiencing great frustration.”
Kenney said the federal government is moving towards a system of pre-evaluation for professionals to determine whether their credentials can be recognized in Canada.
At the same time the government is creating a special skilled trades stream in the skilled workers immigration program which will go into effect in the new year.
“Some of the more acute labor shortages in Canada are in the skilled trades,” said Kenney. “Construction trades and the like. The point system has essentially excluded skilled trades people from immigrating to Canada even though we desperately need them.”
Kenney says he wants to also “substantially increase” the number of immigrants who have job offers before they set foot in Canada.
“Our data tells us that people who come to Canada with prearranged employment, with jobs lined up, their incomes are twice as high as those who don’t. So one of the central ideas in our reform will be to do an infinitely better job of connecting employers with prospective immigrants than is currently the case so that they’ll be coming not just to be dropped into the generic labour pool to sink or swim but they’ll actually be coming in, as much as possible, with a job lined up.”
Original Article
Source: ipolitics
Author: Elizabeth Thompson
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