MIGRATION

Canada Immigration wait times
Improvement in 2008: Ministry                          Karygiannis again raises concerns

OTTAWA - Canada has reversed a decades-long trend toward longer immigration wait times, with prospective newcomers having their applications processed 12 per cent faster last year.

The 2008 figures from **Citizenship and Immigration** show 80 per cent of applications were processed within 33 months -  a four-month improvement from 2007.

The government cites the snail's pace in dealing with applications as a factor that leads educated, highly mobile immigrants to choose other countries over Canada.

But critics say the modest dip in processing times does nothing to make Canada a more attractive destination.

Wait times remain longer than they were in 2004, and business-class immigrants from some countries need to wait more than seven years to have their applications accepted or denied.

Still, Immigration Minister Jason Kenney says the tide has turned.

"This is a huge development,'' Kenney said in an interview.

"It's been at least two decades  - a generation - since waiting times went down rather than up. ... We're talking about highly skilled, economic immigrants and we're competing with places like Australia, New Zealand and the United States for the best and the brightest.

"We were telling people to wait in the queue for five years. Where do you think the most competitive people are going to go _ if they have to wait five years to come to Canada, versus six months for Australia?''

Only recently, he says, his New Zealand counterpart took a look at Canada's backlog numbers and offered to take some of those skilled workers off his hands.

But Kenney says Canada is only a few months slower and is closing the gap.

He credited the shift in part to $109 million that helped hire visa workers, but also to legislative reforms and administrative changes.

Some of the files in Canada's bustling New Delhi office, for example, are now dealt with in relatively tranquil spots like Warsaw, Poland.

All this means Canada now processes old applications at least as fast as it receives new ones to add to the pile.

The backlog in applications skyrocketed to 900,000 from only 40,000 in the early 1990s. As Canadian immigration workers struggled to keep pace, wait times rose.

But opponents aren't impressed. They point to a series of rough patches in the Conservatives' track record.

The processing times for family members actually went up in 2008 _ 20 per cent for dependent children, and more than 25 per cent for spouses and partners.

Eighty per cent of spouses now have their cases processed within 11 months, up from eight months in 2007, while 80 per cent of children are now processed within a year, up from 10 months in 2007.

[Courtesy: Press Secretary - Minister Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism Canada]