Migration Law Immigration Lawyers
How the Liberals will finance the increase in Canadian Immigration
Immigration plank in federal budget
Immigration lawyer Guidy Mamann joined The Morning Show to chat about the how the Liberal’s will finance the increase in immigration.
Here is the text transcription of the interview:
It’s a federal budget will be unveiled after 4:00 this afternoon and you’re talking $200,000,000,000 (Two Hundred Billion) worth of spending. Part of that will be how the liberals financially manage their planned increase in immigration over the next three years. They announced the move last fall to move to a three year planning cycle for admissions. They want to inject more certainty into the system, take a longer view of the admissions process while heeding the call from numerous groups to allow more people into Canada the each year to keep the economy running and keep the population growing and joining us on the line, his immigration lawyer Guidy Mamann, Guidy Good morning.
Good morning.
Guidy, What’s being said right now is that we’re expecting about a, you know, $400,000,000 (Four Hundred Million) or so in this new budget. We also know that, uh, the liberals by 20, 21 want to take in 304,0000 (Three Hundred Forty Thousand) new Canadians and that’s a little bit higher than what we had previously aimed for. I think most reasonable people can agree that we need more people to come into Canada because if for nothing else, our own birth rate isn’t exactly explosive. This kind of money though, uh, do you think it’s a move in the right direction or is it just kind of peppering dollars? Ah, without really I accounting for how much this thing will actually cost?
Well, there’s no question. First of all, we have to account for the increase or you’re looking at approximately 30 percent increase if not a little bit more over the next three years. So we’re, we’re shooting for over a million people in three years. Typically we take about, let’s say around 250,000 per year. So now you’re looking at, let’s say an extra 250,000. So you need money for that. Uh, secondly, uh, you know, the service that we’ve been getting from immigration is not great. It’s improved, but it’s still a long way. Families are still waiting a year or two to be reunited. So the question is how are they going to spend that money? Are they going to spend it, for example, on hiring more officers to, to get these files out the door more quickly or they’re going to be spending the money to, uh, you know, for enforcement, for securing the border. Uh, there’s a real question of how they’re going to spend this money and I’m really curious to see how they’re going to spend this extra $440,000,000 that they’re looking for in this budget.
Yeah, that’s interesting. Um, what the liberals have come under fire recently for mismanaging are not properly dealing with the surge in asylum seekers in the last year or so. Those are separate streams in separate systems. Um, but given the fact that they aren’t handling that file well, do you think that translates into the public looking at them a little bit skeptically when handling the regular immigration file?
Well, I looked at the whole thing skeptically because it’s very difficult for us to tell ’em how many people were going to receive because we have a big hole in the fence. So how many more refugees are going to be coming into the country this year? That’s going to determine how much money we have to spend on the budget, on the immigration budget. You also have to understand that immigration is not the only a budget line. So for example, when you pay the immigration officers and you pay for immigration facilities, et Cetera, that goes into this budget, but there are also other costs that are borne by the province, for example, social assistance, uh, maybe some subsidized housing, uh, all kinds of things that go hand in hand and that’s not going to form part of the, you know, quote, immigration budget, but there are other costs that are going to have to contemplate. So without knowing exactly how many people are going to be coming from the states through the hole in the fence, uh, we really can’t be sure of what these dollars are. These dollars are going to be sufficient or not.
Let’s say the Immigration Minister Ahmed who saying called you up and said, uh, you know, Guidy I need some advice on this. What exactly would you advise him to do in this situation?
Well, quite frankly, I think the refugee system needs a major, a rethink. Uh, we’ve been working with the same sort of regime since 1951 when we signed, when the 1951 convention on refugees was adopted. Uh, we, we then signed it. We need to take a new look at that because we want to make sure that people are being dealt with humanely, uh, but fairly quickly. Um, that’s, that’s one thing. We also have to take a look at the temporary foreign worker program, which is a, which has been a real mess. It’s not really responding to industry. Uh, we have, uh, you know, our economy is very complex. We have, you know, high tech, we have a low skill and for example, low skill is not really being good, looked after very well, for example, agricultural industry as being completely neglected. The current regime doesn’t work for that sector. So we’re also having trouble in manufacturing, a sector. So those are things that need to be looked at. Um, uh, you know, in particular better service. Uh, we have families that are just waiting too long to be reunited. Decisions are taking too long. I’m, the bureaucracy is a, you know, is, it’s too impersonal today. You can’t get answers from immigration. So they need to have people who can answer queries from the public and it’s not being handled through effectively right now.
Guidy, thanks so much for this. I appreciate your time and expertise. My pleasure. Thank you. That again, the immigration lawyer Guidy Mamann joining us here on the morning show.