Fate of Applications submitted before March 2008

March 30, 2012 is an important day in the history of Immigration in Canada. This is the day when Federal budget was announced and along came the announcement of rejecting all the visa applications submitted before March 2008.

In support of this move Finance Minister, Jim Flaherty said, “Canada risks losing the global talent competition for the world’s best and brightest as potential immigrations choose to take their skills to other countries with more responsive immigration system.”

The government tried to justify the rejection by terming the same to be a part of reviving the immigration system by making it faster and easier.
About CA$130 million was refunded to 280,000 applicants who have been waiting for so many years to get an
opportunity to work at Canada.

This move is made also to ensure that the job vacancies are first filled up by the natives and then a chance is given to the migrants.

As an answer to the rejected applications, a group of immigrants have sued the government on the delays the department made in processing the applications.
The Federal Court has ordered the Government to initiate processing all the applications it has received for immigration. The last date to finalize the litigant cases has been decided to be October 14, 2012.

The government presented its clarification by saying that “only 635 cases among the applications have been eliminated by the Immigration Department, which is done in compliance to the law.”
The rejection also has been deferred by another 90 days favoring a plea which was made by a group of lawyers.

The lawyers have also presented their argument by saying that “The government can allot new file numbers to their clients in case it does now want to process the old file numbers.”

The Court was also informed that some of the applicants were asked to submit a few documents and pay the due taxes along with undergoing medical tests as a part of the processing of visa application. This was all done after March 29th deadline.

Lawyers have plans to challenge the government on Charter of Bill Rights. They say that applications who were complete in themselves have also been rejected which goes against the constitution of the nation.

Lawyers and the awaiting applicants are all set to go for any big fight legally against the ill moves of the government.