By Gurmukh Singh, IANS
Toronto : The waiting time for people wanting to migrate to Canada is getting longer and longer, especially for immigrants from some countries including India.
According to Citizenship and Immigration Canada figures, the waiting period for would-be immigrants has gone up by 20 percent since 2004.
Further, the waiting period varies widely across countries and immigration categories.
If you are a skilled worker from Latin America you can enter Canada within 14 months. But if you are from India, you have to wait 62 months.
One can get one’s parents and grandparents in Canada from London in 11 months. But one has to wait 45 months if they happen to be in India.
Giving this information, Toronto MP Jim Karygiannis, who received it under the Access to Information Act, said it might take someone 2,300 times longer to come here if he applied from a particular country and under a specific category.
Giving more examples, he said a dependent child from China could be cleared to enter Canada within four months, while it could take about three years for a dependent child in Cairo to come to Canada.
Questioning the method and pace of application processing at different Canadian missions, the opposition MP said there should be no discrimination against any particular nation or profession.
“Things should move at the same length of time – whether it’s from Greece, from Europe, from south Asia, or from China,” he said.
Currently, Canada has an immigration backlog of more than 800,000. The present Tory government says it rose from 50,000 to current levels because of the negligence during the 10-year rule of the Liberal party.
There have been suggestions to raise the intake of immigrants to 260,000 each year to clear this backlog.
It has also been proposed that 80,000 foreign students studying in Canada should be allowed to apply for permanent residence from within Canada to meet shortage of skilled workers and ease pressure on missions abroad.
Currently, a skilled worker or foreign student in Canada has to apply for immigration from outside of the country.