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seadrag0n

Champion Member
Mar 6, 2018
2,785
2,491
# **The pandemic exposed Canada’s inefficient immigration system. It needs to be scrapped and rebuilt **

by: DOUG SAUNDERS
via The Globe and Mail | November 26, 2021

#Opinion

For a surgeon who had been risking his life in pandemic-hit Canadian hospitals performing organ transplants, the April 14 invitation was a welcome gift. Despite his highly sought-after, life-saving skills and the risks he was taking to do his job, he’d so far had no pathway to becoming Canadian.

Then Marco Mendicino, the immigration minister at the time, announced that Canada would give permanent residency, and thus eventually citizenship, to 90,000 immigrants, refugees and foreign students currently living here on temporary visas and mostly doing in-person jobs deemed “essential.”

It was one part of a broad goal, announced earlier this year, to meet an ambitious target of 401,000 new Canadians in 2021, despite then-closed borders, mainly by drawing on the huge number of people already living and working here.

It sounds good – but the pandemic months have taught us that Canada does not have the immigration system to deliver it.

Almost immediately after that announcement, those invitations collided with a bureaucracy – including a Byzantine and outdated set of federal and provincial immigration rules – that all but prevented those worthy goals from becoming realities.

The transplant doctor soon noticed. He had been slowly accumulating points under Canada’s main immigration system, known as Express Entry, which grants points for things such as education and language fluency and requires full-time work experience in Canada. (Surgeons are classified as self-employed, so have a harder time earning those points.)

While the invitation was a gift, the rules all but prevented him from accepting it. His application – which had to be begun afresh, with no relationship to the existing paper trail of his Express Entry application – had to be personally submitted at a specific time on a weekday. This hours-long procedure on a newly created and deeply dysfunctional and crash-prone web portal was nearly impossible for a working surgeon. For some reason it forbade lawyers and immigration agents from helping, and reportedly barred applicants from working during the application process, which could drag on for months.

The long-standing rules also required him to submit the results of a fluency test in English or French. His language skills weren’t in doubt – you can’t be a high-level surgeon without them – but the testing centres had weeks-long delays, and the minister’s invitation had an hours-long application window.

Many people filed applications without the language test, hoping it could be added informally later. Months later, they found their claims were rejected without any communication from the department, and the whole system had to start again. It was an ordeal for a privileged surgeon; for the nurses and home-care workers for whom the program was intended, it was far worse.

“In 25 years of practice I have never seen the client service as poor as it is now,” says Barbara Jo Caruso, the surgeon’s immigration lawyer. “I think there is a fundamental disconnect right now. … The department needs to change the way front-line workers work, so they can be facilitative and solve problems by making a call. Otherwise they’re wasting enormous amounts of human resources doing the same things over and over.”

The major problem, says Andrew Griffith, a former director-general of Canada’s immigration department, is “not understanding the service needs of the target population.”

In essence, Ottawa is trying to force a growth-oriented policy through a haphazard, enormously complex and often uncommunicative set of provincial and federal bureaucracies that were constructed over the last five decades to restrict immigration and control numbers, and to administer a range of often contradictory immigration programs.

The result has been chaotic. Even though experienced front-line health workers ought to be the most desirable new Canadians, Ottawa was not able to come close to its target of 20,000 of them – after the deadline passed this summer, only 7,155 had reportedly been able to get their names on the list. Tens of thousands more simply could not manage to apply.

Other invitations suffered the opposite problem: The target of 40,000 student-visa holders who’ve completed their degrees was met in fewer than two days. Then a computer failure reportedly caused thousands more to be let into the system in a mess of false messaging and panicked confusion, so Ottawa had to give another 7,300 applicants admission.

Despite its high annual immigration targets (which will continue to rise), Canada has become notorious for its inability to turn people into immigrants and citizens without years of unnecessary delay and reams of procedures that can’t be navigated without a lawyer – even if you’re a nanny earning less than minimum wage. Ottawa currently says it has 1.8 million immigration applications stuck in the queue, many lost on the desks of an understaffed and overburdened public service.

A new Immigration Minister, Sean Fraser, was appointed by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau a few weeks ago. He ought to have one job: to scrap and rebuild the entire system, reducing the off-putting hodgepodge of outda ted programs and procedures with a single, understandable and sensible immigration pathway for all applicants that actually serves the country’s needs. If nothing else, the pandemic months have taught us that we need to start afresh.
So, this guy is working as a surgeon in Canada so he must already have an impossible to get license for a super skilled job of a surgeon but couldn't get a PR while college graduates with shit CRS scores are getting easy PR's? How the f**k did he end up in Canada in the first place? Study permit? Pretty sure Canada doesn't hire outsiders for positions like doctors/surgeons as they are employed directly by the government right? Sounds like BS to me.
 
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Makei

Full Member
Sep 1, 2021
26
2
Good day everyone,

Please, what does it mean if my LinkedIn profile was viewed by a Public Safety Professional in Canada?

Is this an indication that my application is at the security screening stage? (and safe to say that eligibility has been marked 'passed'?)

My criminality was passed in May this year.

@legalfalcon Please assist.

Thank you.
 

Timbuktu_14

Champion Member
Feb 5, 2020
1,452
1,142
So, this guy is working as a surgeon in Canada so he must already have an impossible to get license for a super skilled job of a surgeon but couldn't get a PR while college graduates with shit CRS scores are getting easy PR's? How the f**k did he end up in Canada in the first place? Study permit? Pretty sure Canada doesn't hire outsiders for positions like doctors/surgeons as they are employed directly by the government right? Sounds like BS to me.
Dude probably just painted an hypothesis to get a couple of clicks. Everyone's profiting from immigration news lately. Smh.
 

seadrag0n

Champion Member
Mar 6, 2018
2,785
2,491
Dude probably just painted an hypothesis to get a couple of clicks. Everyone's profiting from immigration news lately. Smh.
Yeah, total BS clickbait article. Who in their right mind that spent all that time and energy required to become a surgeon just to go and struggle in Canada when they can just print money in their own home country.
 
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GandiBaat

VIP Member
Dec 23, 2014
3,711
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NOC Code......
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App. Filed.......
26th September 2021
Doc's Request.
Old Medical
Nomination.....
None
AOR Received.
26th September 2021
IELTS Request
Sent with application
File Transfer...
11-01-2022
Med's Request
Not Applicable, Old Meds
Med's Done....
Old Medical
Interview........
Not Applicable
Passport Req..
22-02-2022
VISA ISSUED...
22-02-2022
LANDED..........
24-02-2022
Buddy, I'm speaking from common sense. If someone hears, UofT, British columbia or Mcgill, the associated reputation is a lot higher than whatever German institution you are mentioning. That is how the world is
Buddy, I have worked in 3 household name tech companies and a major investment bank and practically, everyone there knows the name of major german universities. It does not matter what people on street know or do not know. It matters that those who are making hiring decisions know or do not know. Besides, the name of your graduate school gets you just the first job. Rest is your own thing. Thats how the world REALLY works.

I have never studied in any German school nor Canadian schools. I do not have any skin in this game. I have worked with folks who hold both north american or european (including german) MBAs. Haven't seen anyone of them commanding more prestige over other. There is certainly HBS/GBS/WS vs the rest kind of elitism but thats the extent of it.
 

GandiBaat

VIP Member
Dec 23, 2014
3,711
2,994
NOC Code......
2173
App. Filed.......
26th September 2021
Doc's Request.
Old Medical
Nomination.....
None
AOR Received.
26th September 2021
IELTS Request
Sent with application
File Transfer...
11-01-2022
Med's Request
Not Applicable, Old Meds
Med's Done....
Old Medical
Interview........
Not Applicable
Passport Req..
22-02-2022
VISA ISSUED...
22-02-2022
LANDED..........
24-02-2022
Please, what does it mean if my LinkedIn profile was viewed by a Public Safety Professional in Canada?
Marco Polo is after you!
 

EscoBlades

Champion Member
Jul 22, 2020
2,160
1,768
Toronto
Category........
CEC
Good day everyone,

Please, what does it mean if my LinkedIn profile was viewed by a Public Safety Professional in Canada?

My criminality was passed in May this year.
Could be part of your background check (specifically Security). To know for sure, you’d need to order your GCMS notes.

Public Safety Canada works with 5 agencies in Canada to ensure the security and public safety of those in Canada. The agencies are - RCMP, CSIS, CBSA, Correctional Service, and the Parole Board.
 
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Makei

Full Member
Sep 1, 2021
26
2
Thanks a lot.

I have ordered GCMS notes. Waiting to receive.


Could be part of your background check (specifically Security). To know for sure, you’d need to order your GCMS notes.
Public Safety Canada works with 5 agencies in Canada to ensure the security and public safety of those in Canada. The agencies are - RCMP, CSIS, CBSA, Correctional Service, and the Parole Board.
 

legalfalcon

VIP Member
Sep 21, 2015
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Montréal, Quebec, Canada
Category........
FSW
Visa Office......
Ottawa
NOC Code......
4112
App. Filed.......
03-09-2015
Doc's Request.
01-10-2015
AOR Received.
03-09-2015
Med's Done....
17-08-2015
Passport Req..
05-04-2016
VISA ISSUED...
12-04-2016
LANDED..........
05-05-2016
Good day everyone,

Please, what does it mean if my LinkedIn profile was viewed by a Public Safety Professional in Canada?

Is this an indication that my application is at the security screening stage? (and safe to say that eligibility has been marked 'passed'?)

My criminality was passed in May this year.

@legalfalcon Please assist.

Thank you.
See https://bit.ly/3E1UFjt

[My response does not constitute legal advice and neither does it give rise to any lawyer-client relationship.]
 
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nns14

Champion Member
Feb 10, 2018
1,438
888
Category........
FSW
Visa Office......
Nairobi, Kenya
NOC Code......
2147
App. Filed.......
26-09-2019
AOR Received.
26-09-2019
File Transfer...
24-10-2019
Passport Req..
18-Jul-2022
VISA ISSUED...
05-Aug-2022
LANDED..........
11-Jan-2023
Visa offices - Sydney, Nairobi, Paris, Accra and Edmonton woke up but still lazy
What update you saw from Nairobi VO?? Please