Help With Getting Your Credentials Recognized

Here's an article at British Columbia's ongoing efforts to help immigrants have their foreign credentials recognized (see http://www.arrivebc.com/ for more information):



Immigrant workers get connected

Business Examiner - Fraser ValleyMonday, June 02, 2008

By Gary McKenna

Skilled labour may be in short supply in B.C., but there is no lack of bureaucracy and red tape preventing immigrants from working in the field for which they have been trained.


According to Ken Hemphill, the director of Back In Motion, streamlining the credentials process could help alleviate pressures on the ever-tightening job market.

His organization is part of the province's Skills Connect for Immigrants program which helps newcomers navigate an unfamiliar labour market and connect with work opportunities.

"It is definitely one piece of the puzzle," he says. "We can either look at educating people internally, or get skilled workers from elsewhere and get them recognized."

Skills Connect launched in 2006 and targets sectors experiencing labour shortages, mainly transportation, construction, energy and tourism.

The program has been so successful that the provincial government recently decided to expand it to include the health care sector.

Most of the immigrants who participate in Skills Connect have already found work in Canada, albeit not usually in their areas of expertise.

"I can help somebody move out of that $8-an-hour job," says Jody Johnson, the program co-ordinator at Working Solutions, a Skills Connect affiliated program. "So they become not only a meaningful contributor to society, but they become taxpayers."

Part of making that move involves ensuring the worker has the proper training and is up to Canadian standards. That could mean more schooling or some refresher courses.

This is where Johnson comes in.

"Our role is really to be a guide or a coach," she says. "We have access to a lot of information. We will help them do research to find out what is needed and make sure they are taking the most efficient and effective route to get there."

With programs like Skills Connect in place, Johnson says B.C. can become a more attractive place to work for those thinking about moving here from overseas. The total 2007-08 budget for Skills Connect is $9.9 million for all employment sectors, including health. The province contributes $4.8 million, Immigration Canada $4.1million and the Ministry of Health, with funding from Health Canada, will provide $1 million to expand the program to the health sector.

CIC Will Be Taking Closer Look at Sponsorship Applications

CIC confirmed recently that they will be cracking down on sponsorship applications after numerous "marriages of convenience" entered into solely to gain residence. I believe that hiring legal counsel is essential for the sponsorship process -- lawyers know the questions CIC officials will be asking when reviewing a sponsorship application and can prepare an application that will likely withstand scrutiny for genuine relationships.

Here's a recent Toronto Star article on this very interesting development:

'Rent-a-guest' schemes tipped off immigration

Investigators reportedly probing marriage scams

May 23, 2008 04:30 AM Nicholas Keung IMMIGRATION/DIVERSITY REPORTER

When Canadian immigration officials in New Delhi began to notice the same guests appearing in photos of different weddings submitted as evidence for sponsoring overseas brides and grooms to Canada, an alarm went off.

Officers at the visa post pulled out all the other spousal sponsorship files to compare notes, and further investigations would discover several local temples were actually involved in "rent-a-guest" operations, setting up wedding ceremonies for immigration purposes.

"At a price, you could get packaged services with a wedding ceremony where people stand in as guests and relatives, posing for photos as in a real marriage," said immigration lawyer Richard Kurland, who obtained an internal government report on these allegations through an access to information request.

"The officials started to see the same faces over and over again. They called in people for questions. When they couldn't answer these questions, it became apparent that something was not right."

To crack down on those using phony marriages to come to Canada, Citizenship and Immigration Canada, according to news reports, is now sending investigative teams around the world, especially to high-fraud regions such as India, China and Vietnam, to gather intelligence on staged marriages.

Immigration officials would not confirm the establishment of such overseas teams.
"The government is concerned about marriages of convenience and is currently engaged in the investigation of these cases," said department spokesperson Danielle Norris. "We regularly review and examine our practices and procedures to further enhance our policies and action is taken to address concerns associated with marriages of convenience."

Until now, Canadian officials could do little to go after Canadians who knowingly enter into a marriage of convenience to bring foreign nationals here, except to reject their sponsorship applications.

While fraudulent marriages are not a new phenomenon, the investigative team, said to be made up of five undercover investigators, is a new tool for potential prosecution against the Canadian collaborators.

Kurland said these Canadian investigators can serve as expert witnesses in trials here, and their intelligence information can be used to obtain search warrants for evidence, such as email correspondence and phone bills, as well as arrest warrants to pursue Canadians involved in such scams.

Some who enter such marriages may be innocent victims, dumped by their foreign spouses as soon as they've arrived in Canada. But "this is an organized criminality that also rips off people's hearts and purses, and the (intelligence) team is an excellent use of public resources to facilitate the prosecution of immigration violations," Kurland said.

Whether in a marriage of convenience or not, a Canadian sponsor is stuck with the financial obligation to a foreign spouse required under the sponsorship for up to three years. If the spouse ends up on government assistance, the sponsor must repay the government and could risk being denied future sponsorship applications.

However, genuine couples could be paying the price for the increased scrutiny.

Toronto immigration lawyer Avvy Go has had applicants who were denied but later successfully appealed and had their cases sent back to the visa posts for reassessment.

"There is no time limitation on that. Some of my clients ended up being separated from their spouses for three, four years before they were joined in Canada," said Go, of the Metro Toronto Chinese and Southeast Asian Legal Clinic.

Immigration's Norris said a survey and a case assessment tool have been created to help the regional offices identify gaps and a staff anti-fraud manual has been updated.