Alabaman said:
The govt is chosen by the people to work for the people that chose it and not against. Immigration Canada will not allow family and friends to visit you in Canada, they will not process spousal visas in time and yet we put them there. There has to be a change. We have to start a change and not just resign to fate.
The irony is that CIC thinks it
IS protecting Canadians by keeping out potential scammers. The aim is laudable, but the implementation is deplorable. CIC requires applicants (for PRs or TRVs) to prove with documents that the Visa Officer's (VO's) suspicions are not valid. At the end of the day, NO documents will persuade a VO determined to be suspicious. You need only read CAIPS notes to see how faulty, circular, and artificial are the arguments used by VOs to justify their decisions.
The problem is that VOs must be given an enormous amount of discretionary power; that is the only way they can make decisions about applicants' future intentions based on existing documents. It is a difficult task -- because they make it difficult. If they used other methods of assessment their job would be much easier. For example, call applicants and sponsors on the phone for a preliminary assessment -- thus streaming the applications into fast or slow lanes according to problems discovered / not discovered during the preliminary interview.
Another example. Use conditional PRs, confirming them only if the couple is together after two years. This shakes out many of the scammers who marry only for a visa, and thus allows the VO to approve cases where he/she would otherwise take a lot of time checking out. Consider: the VO's career is probably jeopardized if he/she makes too many bad decisions in favour of "poor" PRs, and so VOs probably err on the side of caution. This makes the process slow and painful for all of us. Release the VOs from so much responsibility, let a two-year testing period separate the wheat from the chaff for them, and they can make decisions more speedily.
Yes, there are problems with the probationary PR -- e.g. tending to force the PR to stick with a possibly-abusive sponsor. But it would be easy to set up a tribunal system to allow special dispensations to PRs stuck in this predicament. If the overall time and expense of such a tribunal system were less than the current burdensome, slow visa process, then the idea should be examined thoroughly, and not dismissed out of hand. And surely other countries using the probationary visa system would have some helpful suggestions about how to avoid the abuses.
Many posters rebutted this suggestion in another post, saying they preferred the "once and for all" system Canada uses, but at the same time they deplored the length of time Canada takes for PR decisions! Given that the length of time is directly caused by the need to make a decision "once and for all", I am at a loss to understand the aversion to probationary PRs.
My point in writing is not to suggest that we reform the bureaucracy by talking to bureaucrats. So many bureaucracies in the past have successfully resisted attempts at reform. But sooner or later Canada will formally re-examine its immigration practices, policies, and even the Law. By then most of us will be comfortably ensconced in our lives, with our spouses, working at jobs, buying houses, raising kids. We will read about some attempted reform or other -- and we will quickly think that immigration is no longer a problem for us, and we will pass on to something else.
I suggest we
NOT do that. Let's Not turn a blind eye to Immigration matters. There are many things we can do to hasten reform: write a reasoned critique of the process to one's local member of parliament; send a letter to the editor of your local newspaper; get involved in any public discussions of this issue, esecially those organized by the government to gather informed opinions from the public. There are many other ways that will be discovered if we stay attentive, if we avoid becoming complacent.
Gasp!!! I am taking a deep breath, now!
