The reality of “faster’ Immigration Process

With the changes in Immigration process people find the same to become even slower than before

Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC) recently has made a lot of changes in the Immigration Criteria claiming that the immigration process will become faster and smoother.

According to the changes, language proficiency would be given most of the importance. It would be mandatory for the applicants to know English or French as a language. Young immigrants in the age range of 18-35 would be given good scores for this category. Canadian work experience would yield good scores for the applicants and the education or degree earned at a foreign university will be standardized against the Canadian standards.

Immigration Minister Jason Kenney says, “Our government has a plan for a faster, flexible and secure immigration program which will better economic needs of the country and uphold our humanitarian commitments by supporting the immigrants.”

He also suggests that the changes will be beneficial for Canada’ growth and will also help the immigrants to live a better life in Canada. He informs that his department has worked well in the past year and even this year they aim to make the process even faster.

The experts in the field are raising questions on the changes about the actuality of the speed it may add to the immigration process. They find the system to be more rigid and strict for the applicants.

Experts have expressed their dissatisfaction on the issue of “visa application offices closure” in Canada and even in the other countries, claiming that the step would reduce the cost of operating these offices for the Government. It has become quite easy for an officer to term marriage as “marriage of convenience”, with the recent changes in the spousal visa requirements. There is every possibility that even the genuine marriage cases will be denied by the officers.

The decision of retaining PhD students after completing their study is also a million dollar question as there should be vacancies for them to work, which at the moment does not seem to be possible, looking at the unemployment rates of the country.

Checking the credentials of an immigrant against Canadian standards would probably make a skilled professional coming to Canada; take another examination to prove their worth which is far away from justified for an immigrant.

The immigration process has slowed down in the present due to reducing the number of staff to cut the cost of government. Hence the claims to make the process faster and smoother probably are far away from reality.