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I am a doctor and I know that one of the great problems that make Canada in need of doctors is that the Canadian doctors go to USA after graduation to live and work there. For long years the balance between doctors who leave Canada for USA and vice versa is in favor of USA. The question is WHY? it is simple ,because USA need doctors, they also recognise the Canadian medical educationl system. Furthermore the doctors in USA gain more money than in Canada, and pay less taxes. The question here was it or not more beneficial for the conservative party to write a bill to oblige the Canadian doctors to sign an intent to stay in Canada before granting the medical degree ? I think it would be more beneficial for Canada to make the Canadian licensed doctors sign such intent more than to let a non-licensed doctor to sign it!!!
Medical Canadian licensing bodies require that you not be away from practice for more than 1 (or in some instances 2) years. Of course, until he has his license, international doctors cannot practice in Canada, a Catch 22 that confronts all too many doctors from abroad. But Most of them had planned to seek practical work overseas as soon as they had the Canadian citizenship, all the while continuing to complete their accreditation requirements here. That way they could meet all of the requirements to be able to practice in Canada in the most expeditious way. Sometimes, their ability to return to work in their field is also critical to their abilities to support their families here in Canada, all of whom have no desire to live anywhere else. Those doctors will return as soon as they have completed their hours of practice.
Under this new scenario, many doctors and other permanent residents cannot leave the country to resume their practice for another year, which not only will delay their accreditation here but will also create severe hardship for their families as their savings are running out. They were going to rely on their income from abroad to support them here,as long as they do not allow them to work in their profession.But now they are changing the rules on them mid-stream. That is unfair to them, and it is unfair to Canadians who will benefit greatly from having those doctors practice medicine here as soon as possible.
In reality the declared reasons for these changes are widely separated from the proposed regulations. Nobody can imagine that you will strenthgen citizenship by staying one more year,or signing an intent to stay document. Furthermore, those who spent part of their lives working or studying in Canada before being permanent residents, no sense to increase this time allawance by 2 years!!! Many of them were living in Canada for more than 10 years. You will strenthgen citizenship if you work on integration of the new immigrants in the Canadian job market, if you work on the difficult file of licensing bodies to facilitate offering licenses to permanent residents. You will achieve this goal also if you work to integrate the new comers children in schools and the whole family in the social activities around them.There is no system to follow the families of new comer and estimate how they are integrated in the Canadian society. All of a suddent they discover that this family immigrated since few years and now they apply for citizenship.Many other measures should be taken but I do not think that they are willing to take steps in this direction as it is more difficult and require hard working. It would be rather easy to pass such laws in the parliment as they have the majority.
According to the statistics, about 80% of immigrants get their citizenship within 2 years. So the whole process takes 3 years of physical presence and 2 years of processing equal 5 years. The minister proposed 4 years of physical presence and one year of processing so the total would be 5 years!!! where is the acceleration here??!!! In fact it will be longer. The backlog may move a little during the transient year where the supposed applicants who finished 1095 have to wait one more year. After that everything will go back to the same point but more long as it will be 4 years of physical stay and 2 or 3 years of preocessing.
The minister did not touch the real problems which created this backlog,which include the residency questionnaire. The majority of files which are delayed are processed in a residency questinnaire, which requests so many documents and the time and efforts are wasted in correspondance and checking. Finally, how many cases of frauds discovered? The minister did not give us any informations about the percentage of discovered frauds since the establishement of this residency questionnaire??!! Was it deserving for such major efforts and money spent? What are the efforts done in CIC to change all of this?
Well, if the minister would like to move the backlog here one suggestion:
1- all applicants must pass the citizenship exam as the language exam before application for citizenship and no need to wait for the file revision before that decision.Actually before I take a decision I would like to know your knowledge about Canada.
2- As long as we are fraud obssessed, all applicants must prepare all papers needed as if they were requested a residency questionnaire. These documents must be arranged and numbered in a special sequence,for example from 1 to 25. The citizenship officer will pass through documents from number 1 to 12 and most of the applications which are considred as straight forward will be considered as eligible for citizenship and decision is taken. If the officer is not totally convinced he go further in the file and may be able to take a decision from documents 13 to 21 for example . Those who are not satisfied after the 25 regular documents ,can ask for more documents and I am sure they will be a minority.
3- Perhaps some people will say that is too much for all applicants. That is not real, because these extra documents will be prepared by those ,for example, who left Canada during their residency more than a certain period . So, for those who did not leave at all or left for short periods ,they are not requested to do it. If their situation was more complicated they have to prepare more documents,and if it was more simple they have not to add any more documents. So, it is only a little bit burden for some people and believe me they would prefer this and not to stay long months and years in correspondance and waiting with CIC.
4- An additional reason is that it would be more human that all people prepared the needed documents, otherwise there are some suspected other who are requested to prepare for a residency questionnaire.
