New citizenship rules-No more citizenship by fraud

The legislation tabled today would:

1. Add legal authority to regulate citizenship consultants and to crack down where they help people gain citizenship fraudulently.
   • Currently, citizenship consultants are unregistered and unregulated.
   • As part of the Government’s effort to deal with unscrupulous consultants, the amendments would create the authority to designate a regulatory body to regulate citizenship consultants.
   • Currently, citizenship consultant involvement with an application for citizenship is not regulated.
   • The amendments would require that applicants use an authorized consultant, and create an offence for unauthorized consultants who are providing representation or advice, or offer to do so, and create consistent penalties between citizenship and immigration programs for citizenship fraud.
2. Increase the penalties for citizenship fraud to a maximum of $100,000 or up to five years in prison or both.
   • The current penalty in the Citizenship Act for committing fraud is a fine of a maximum of $1,000 or one year in prison for both. That penalty was enacted in 1977 and is out of line with the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act.
   • The new penalty for fraud is a fine to a maximum of $100,000 or five years in prison or both, which modernizes the penalty for fraud in the Citizenship Act and is the same as the penalty for the equivalent offence in IRPA, thereby bringing it in line with the immigration program.
3. Strengthen the rules around citizenship residence requirements so that people applying for citizenship would have to be physically present in Canada for three of the previous four years.
   • Currently, adult applicants must reside in Canada three out of the previous four years. However, “residence” is not defined in the Citizenship Act. As a result, it is possible under the current Act for someone who has not been physically present in Canada for three years to become a citizen.
   • The Government proposes to amend the Citizenship Act to require physical presence of the applicant in Canada for three of the previous four years before their application.
   • The intent of the requirement for physical presence in Canada is to support newcomer integration into Canadian society.
4. Prevent foreign criminals - people charged with or convicted of a crime outside of Canada or serving a sentence outside Canada - from becoming Canadian citizens.
   • Currently, the Citizenship Act bars applicants from citizenship where they have been charged or convicted of any indictable offence in Canada, or where they are serving a sentence in Canada. It has no similar bar for foreign criminality.
   • The Government proposes to expand prohibitions to include people who have been charged or convicted of similar crimes abroad from obtaining citizenship.
   • This would mean that a person would not be granted citizenship while being convicted of, or subject to a criminal proceeding for certain foreign offences, or for serving a sentence outside Canada.
5. Ensure that the law supports implementation of the first generation limit to citizenship, so that it does not unintentionally bar access to eligible applicants, and expands the exception to the first generation limit so that children of Crown servants can pass on citizenship.
   • The Government proposes to amend the Citizenship Act so that the first generation limit is applied consistently in line with the intent of recent Bill C-37 amendments.
   • The Government also proposes to extend Canadian citizenship beyond the first generation limit for the children of people who were born, or adopted, abroad while their parent was working abroad for the federal, provincial or territorial governments (Crown servants).
   • This amendment would ensure that children born or adopted outside Canada to serving Canadian Crown servants are not adversely affected by their parents’ service to Canada and are able to pass on citizenship to any children they may have or adopt outside Canada (one generation only

Have they also included a proposal to make getting a job as an obligation of Canadian citizenship which was specified in the new Citizenship guide?

This means those without job after acquiring citizenship may be stripped of their status and sent back to their home country, that will be really helpful when the debt conditions implode and there is mass unemployment.

All this is bullsh*t, why doesn't he talk about the Processing time which is killimg some of us and blocking us from moving??????????????? All this is jus nonsence he is talking about. When will he make a slide change atleast on the processing time, why he doesnt talk about it too. All this doesnt not help us at all.

well said ben2009. processing times are crazy, you'd think we were dealing with a backward country here. whats going on!?

Here's just one column regarding the immigration and refugee system. Whether we like it or not, the government must address abuses of the system:

A sham of a refugee system

By Mindelle Jacobs

Last Updated: June 13, 2010 12:00am

There’s no end to the lies and contortions bogus refugees and rule-breaking would-be immigrants will use to stay in Canada. Veteran immigration lawyer Julie Taub can smell a scam a mile away.

There was the time two heterosexual couples, both with kids, showed up in her office hoping to claim refugee status. Both couples, from a South American country, claimed they were gay and would be persecuted if they went home.

“I looked at them and I was just astounded,” says Taub, an Ottawa lawyer and former member of the Immigration and Refugee Board. “I said, ‘but you’re married with children!’ They said, ‘we go both ways.’ ”

Then there are the people who seek her help to renew their permanent resident cards when they haven’t met the already ridiculously loose requirement that they spend a certain period on Canadian soil.

“They’re panicking because they haven’t spent enough time in Canada,” says Taub. (Permanent residents only have to spend two years in Canada over a five-year period to maintain their PR status.)

Grasping at straws for a way to renew their PR cards, some of her clients plotted to create a fabricated contract of employment with a Canadian employer abroad — a friend of theirs — and then get Taub to prepare the renewal paperwork based on that loophole.

(Working offshore for a Canadian company counts as time in Canada.)

“But they really hadn’t (worked abroad). They said everybody’s doing it,” recalls Taub. “Very soon, the word got out … that I wouldn’t do it. I don’t know who’s doing it. Somebody’s doing it.”

Another popular scam involves permanent residents in the entrepreneur class category who have no intention of setting up a business in Canada. They just want their kids to study for three years at a Canadian university without paying international fees. (Immigrants in the entrepreneur class have three years to start a business here.)

University students have come to Taub pleading for help to extend their PR status so they can study for one more year and finish their degrees without paying the higher fees.

Once she finds out that their parents aren’t in Canada, she shoos the students out the door. “It enrages me because guess who’s subsidizing these foreign kids as technically permanent residents when they shouldn’t be?” Canadian taxpayers, of course.

“This is such a loophole you can drive an 18-wheeler through it,” Taub sighs. “Canada has the most lax rules in the world.”

She welcomes the reworked refugee reform legislation, miraculously agreed to by all parties on Thursday, but wishes it had gone even further.

For instance, Taub believes people should have to be in Canada 80% of the time to retain their permanent resident status. I agree. Right now, many people are using us for our passport and generous social benefits while they live elsewhere most of the time. How does Canada benefit from such a regime?

She also suggests smart cards that could be swiped whenever permanent residents leave or return to Canada to enforce minimum residency requirements. Another great idea.

In addition, Taub proposes that we focus on resettling the refugees most in need — those in refugee camps — instead of spending vast amounts of money processing asylum claims from democratic countries.

Canada’s top 10 source countries for refugee claimants in 2009 included Mexico, Hungary, the Czech Republic and the U.S., for heaven’s sake.

In 2009, almost all Czech and Hungarian asylum claims were made in Canada. And 7,500 Mexicans claimed refugee status in Canada last year, compared to only 2,360 who claimed asylum in the U.S. (Visa requirements have since stemmed the tide from the Czech Republic and Mexico.)

Here’s one final shocking detail. The UN Refugee Agency has a $3-billion budget this year to help 34 million refugees and internally displaced people. Canada spends about the same amount yearly on 30,000 to 40,000 refugee claimants.

Yes, folks, we’ve been taken for suckers.

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http://www.edmontonsun.com/comment/columnists/mindelle_jacobs/2010/06/11/14359301.html