TORY SLEAZE BOMBSHELL: American Republican-style Racist Redneck Alberta-centric White Anglo Saxon Protestant trailer trash Conservatives caught red handed discriminating against immigrants from Africa and Asia
Auld Bob
Immigration controversy erupts: 'If you fall in love with someone in
an African country, God help you'
Jun 30, 2009 04:30 AM
Lesley Ciarula Taylor
IMMIGRATION REPORTER
Almost half the husbands and wives in southern China and western
Africa who want to join their spouses in Canada are refused,
government documents show, a situation MP Olivia Chow calls cruel and
arbitrary.
That's in sharp to contrast to other places, such as Taiwan, where
just 3 per cent of spouses who apply to be reunited with their
partners in Canada are rejected, according to Citizenship and
Immigration Canada statistics from its visa offices around the world.
"We find this cruel and unfair and it needs to be changed," said Chow,
the NDP immigration critic who yesterday released the government's
spousal sponsorship numbers after a formal written request.
"I don't know a lot of marriages that could handle the separation,"
she said. "If you fall in love with someone in an African country, God
help you."
That Canada makes it tough for some couples to be together is no
surprise to Khalid Nabbie, a Markham engineer who has two little
girls. He has spent a year scaling a mountain of bureaucracy, amassing
an application file two inches thick in which he has had to give
details of his relationship, such as when he met his wife, Dixie Ann.
"The system encourages you not to tell the truth," says a frustrated
Nabbie, who has been apart from Dixie-Anne, who lives in Trinidad,
since last year.
"I know three people who came here on (visitor's) visas and applied
here. It takes longer, but at least they're together."
When Nabbie applied to sponsor his wife, he did not realize that out-
of-country applicants are not allowed to visit Canada while their
request is under consideration.
The refusal rate for Hong Kong – which also serves Guangdong, Fujian
and Hainan in southern China – was 48 per cent last year, the figures
reveal. From the Accra office, which serves the West African countries
of Gambia, Ghana, Sierra Leone and Liberia, the rate was 46 per cent.
Sydney's rejection rate was 5 per cent while Buffalo's was 5 per cent.
When asked about the discrepancies in the rejection rates, Citizenship
and Immigration Canada did not respond.
Other high rates were recorded from Port-au-Prince, Haiti (34 per
cent), and Port of Spain, Trinidad (33 per cent).
In many rejected cases, Canadian officials suspect that the marriage
is fraudulent, explained immigration lawyer Elizabeth Long, who deals
frequently with Canada's Hong Kong visa office.
Besides facing a high refusal rate, people applying through the Hong
Kong and Accra offices also generally wait much longer for an answer,
the numbers show. Doing the math, Chow figures the Accra office
completes about one case per working day, and it typically takes 20
months for an application to make its way through.
If there is a rejection and appeal, Long said, the process can take
four or five years.
And applicants from Hong Kong in many cases are interviewed by phone
rather than in person, Long said.
"This is a major concern for the integrity of the process," she said.
"The best way to determine credibility is to look someone in the eye."
Applications made at the Nairobi office, which handles central Africa,
also take 20 to 23 months, longer than they did two years ago.
Although Dixie Ann Nabbie's application has been approved in Canada,
it still needs approval from the Canadian visa office in Port of Spain
and that's not guaranteed.
The Nabbies married in Trinidad eight years ago and are raising two
girls, Safiya, 2, and Soraya, 6. Khalid, born and raised in Winnipeg,
returned to Canada last August and applied to sponsor Dixie Ann.
Two months ago, Khalid brought the girls here because of a terrifying
rise in crime and child kidnappings on the Caribbean island.
"It's so easy to find out what is genuine and what is not. A bank can
do it for a credit card – why can't Canada?" Nabbie asked. "This is
very hard on a marriage. I went down three times in March before the
girls came. We were on the phone last night for two hours."
The Nabbies' application file is full of wedding and birthday photos,
as well as transcripts of interviews in which he had to recite the
details of their first date, how he met his wife and the birthdates of
his in-laws.
The visa offices that handle the most spousal-reunification requests
are in China (Beijing and Hong Kong, 5,749 in 2008); India (5,788);
Pakistan (2,427); and the Philippines (2,222).
The Beijing office (with applications handled by a private company on
contract) has a refusal rate of about
20 per cent. New Delhi's is 14 per cent; Islamabad's 15 per cent; and
Manila's 9 per cent.
The difference between the Hong Kong and Beijing figures baffles Chow:
"I don't see why there would be a higher level of fraud in one part of
China from another."
Conversely, Taipei's refusal rate is one of the lowest in the world,
at just 3 per cent of the 171 applications handled in 2008.
snowman
>
> http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/article/658649
>
>
The Star is kind of like the Onion in that both produce BS new stories.
the Star however is different from the Onion in that the Onion knows
that it is creating fluff.
And Peffers is stupid enough to buy into it, lol.
--
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"It's the customer's privilege to burst their own f*cking yolk."
-Gordon Ramsey
John Fleming
in the scriptorium snowman <x@x.x> wrote:
> $Auld Bob wrote:
> $>
> $> http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/article/658649
> $
> $The Star is kind of like the Onion in that both produce BS new stories.
> $ the Star however is different from the Onion in that the Onion knows
> $that it is creating fluff.
> $
> $And Peffers is stupid enough to buy into it, lol.
I concur.
--
John Fleming
Edmonton, Canada
Old MacDonald had a farm E-I-E-I-O
And on that farm he had a genome E-I-E-I-O
With a SNP SNP here and a SNP SNP there,
Here a SNP, there a SNP, everywhere a SNP SNP
Old MacDonald had a farm E-I-E-I-O