the CanadaVisa Team - 22 July, 2015
With new citizenship regulations recently put into effect, Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism Minister Jason Kenney has been vocal about improving the immigrant integration and citizenship processes so that newcomers can better integrate into the Canadian mosaic.
Having recently announced that Canada has no plans to reduce the 2009 targets for immigration, Minister Kenney maintains that, "we cannot afford to be passive about the challenges of integration."
Over the last three years, Minister Kenney has spent countless hours with Canada's various cultural communities, discussing how to improve settlement and integration. From these meetings, he has learned that immigrants themselves see no conflict between Canada's history of pluralism and providing newcomers with the tools to successfully enter the mainstream.
The government has thus been working on projects to improve immigrant integration.
For one, Citizenship and Immigration Canada has nearly quadrupled the amount of funding for language training over the past few years, and Minister Kenney has been vocal about the importance English and/or French knowledge for Canadian citizenship.
The government is also preparing to expand the Canadian Immigrant Integration Project (CIIP) , a pilot project that has been employed in China, India, and the Philippines. The program seeks to help soon-to-be immigrants prepare for arrival ahead of time, by getting a head start on foreign credential recognition, finding schools for their children, housing, health coverage, and so on.
Additionally, Minister Kenney has recently ordered a complete overhaul of the current citizenship test and the accompanying educational material for immigrants, entitled "A Look at Canada." Both the test and the information date back to 1997 and, according to Minister Kenney, do not accurately reflect the values and history of Canada.
"Overwhelmingly, people say we need to focus on social cohesion, we need to focus on the things that unite us, not those that divide us," says Minister Kenney.
