Federal Minister of Immigration and Citizenship Jason Kenney indicated that he plans to cut the family reunification program.
Previous statements issued by Kenney specified his ministry found there were too many fraudulent immigration cases and his office would like to reduce immigrants into Canada, when they are applying fraudulently.
As a result of this, he has reduced the number of parents that come to Canada annually under the family reunification program from 16,000 to 11,000.
Currently, the wait time is nearly 13 years for some parents or grandparents who want to immigrate to Canada.
It is clear that working immigrants who want their families to join them in Canada will trickle down in numbers.
It will be a great loss for families currently in Canada if immigration of their parents and children is ceased, and it will be a strong deterrent for skilled workers to immigrate to Canada if their families cannot join them.
I would like to emphasize to Mr. Kenney that grandparents are an important and positive influence in the lives of children.
Grandparents can be an emotional lifeline for many children, and often are the sole influences to transfer values and cultural beliefs. By making it more difficult for grandparents to immigrate to Canada, Kenney is cutting off an important connection.
I want to issue an alert to the community to lobby Jason Kenney to not cut this program.
This intended cut of the family reunification program affects every community, in particular South Asian communities.
Charan Gill, Surrey