By Will Tao
- Commentary -

The Liberal Government finally delivered on their long-standing campaign promise to end conditional permanent residency for spouses on April 28.
Previously introduced in October 2012 by the Conservative government, the conditional permanent residence regulation required those who were in a relationship for two years or less and had no children to live with their sponsors for two years after they became permanent residents. Some exceptions were carved out for individuals who were victims of abuse or neglect. The Toronto Star (Nicholas Keung) reported that only 57 individuals sought an exemption and were successful in 75 per cent of their exemption requests.
The negative consequences of conditional permanent residency were often borne by vulnerable women and their young newly-born children. New to Canada and without a support network, they were victimized by their abusive spouses, but often too scared to seek help.
While the exception provisions allowed for a streamlined process to contact Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) in these circumstances, I had several women subject to conditional permanent residence tell me first-hand stories of being prevented access to computers, phones, even the internet. In one case, I had a woman tell me that she locked herself in a bathroom just to communicate with me as we prepared her case.
Another woman told me about feigning sleep in order to avoid the verbal and psychological abuse of a partner coming home violent and intoxicated. All of this because they were afraid to leave their spouses and put their status in Canada at risk.
I am glad these individuals can now sleep better at night and enjoy the security that all Canadians rightfully enjoy.
It is important to note that that these stories did not only come from vulnerable women. They also came from male conditional permanent residents who were abandoned by their spouses, as well as the LGBTQ2+. Many of these relationships broke down foremost as a result of infidelity, leading later to abuse and neglect – a sequence of events that the earlier exceptions policy appears to have overlooked.
Conditional permanent residence created more harm than good, more uncertainty. For this, I am glad it is a thing of the past and we can move forward.
Moving forward, in my view, begins by re-framing the two issues of marriage fraud and marriage breakdown. We should not use the end of the conditional permanent residence requirement as a pretext to now second guess or re-scrutinize the genuineness and immigration intent of a majority (80%+) of bona-fide immigrant marriages. The end of conditional permanent residence, I hope, will not lend cover to sponsors trying to remove their sponsored spouses from Canada.
The reality with sponsorship of immigrant spouses is that a significant portion of genuine marriages will end up breaking down. While academic research is limited in this area, my hypothesis is based on the following:
First, I believe economic challenges have a greater negative effective on immigrant marriages and common-law partnership. Piecing together what we do know, recent Canada statistics show that 48% of all marriages are now ending in divorce, with financial issues and adultery among the leading causes.
Poverty affects racialized individuals at a rate four times greater than non-racialized families and past studies have found immigrants who have been in Canada less than five years are 11 percentage points more likely to be in poverty than other Canadians.
Furthermore, immigrant families, receive less in household income and are less likely to own homes than non-immigrant families. New Canadian immigrants, especially women, are often more likely to face labour market challenges and experiences with precarious work conditions.
Second, I suggest that cultural shock also contributes to marriage breakdown by creating consequences such as the return of the sponsored spouse to their home country, abandonment, and adultery. Carmen Munoz, Program Manager for the Cross-Cultural Peer Support Group Program for Immigrant and Refugee Women (CCPSGP) highlights in a piece she writes the challenges new immigrant women face which include experiencing “intense culture shock, isolation, depression, frustration and an overwhelming sense of confusion, which in turn, not only manifests itself mentally, but through physical reactions as well.”
The cultural pressures, the economic pressures, and often extended family pressures (from both the Sponsor and the Applicant) can coalesce and intersect into major challenges for immigrant marriages and common-law partnerships.
Unfortunately, conditional permanent residence lumped the issue of marriage breakdown unnecessarily into the marriage fraud debate, inputting bad intentions where more often than not none existed. Not only did it punish genuine couples often at their most vulnerable moments, but it also led to not enough focus being placed to eliminating the actual root causes of marriage fraud – unauthorized legal practitioners both in Canada and internationally who set up marriages of convenience for their own financial gain.
Ultimately, I suggest that Parliament should focus on creating conditions that strengthen immigrant marriages and prevent systemic abuse of our sponsorship system, rather than enforcing back-end restrictions that may aggravate the challenges faced by new Canadian families.

(Will Tao is a Canadian immigration lawyer based in Vancouver, B.C., with a practice primary focused on complex immigration applications and refusals on behalf of educational institutions and international students. Tao is a former member of New Canadian Media's board of directors and a current member of the Not-for-profit corporation. He currently sits on the Canadian Bar Association British Columbia’s Equality and Diversity Committee and on the City of Vancouver’s Cultural Communities Advisory Committee.)

By Victor Ing (Asian Pacific Post)

Canada’s Express Entry system continues to make headlines with more upcoming changes announced to the points scoring system called the “Comprehensive Ranking System” or CRS.
Starting June 6, 2017, additional CRS points will be awarded to Express Entry candidates with strong French language ability and those with siblings living in Canada.
In November 2016, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (“IRCC”) announced significant changes to overhaul the way CRS points are calculated under the Express Entry system.
These changes reduced the points awarded to candidates for job offers but increased points for candidates who have spent time in Canada, such as international students who have completed a post-secondary educational credential in Canada.
Since the November 2016 changes have taken effect, the CRS points required to obtain an invitation to apply for permanent residence have dropped significantly. Record lows are being established with each passing round of invitation in the month of April.
Starting on April 5, 2017 the CRS points needed to receive an invitation to apply dropped to 431. One week later, a new low score of 423 points was established on April 12, 2017.
Finally, the latest round of invitation took place on April 19, 2017 and reduced the points even further to 415 points.
The new changes to take effect on June 6, 2017 will grant up to 30 additional points to Express Entry candidates with strong French language abilities. These points can only be claimed if the candidate can prove their French language skills by completing the Test d’évaluation de français (“TEF”) for the four skills of reading, writing, listening and speaking.
Furthermore, starting on June 6, 2017, Express Entry candidates will be awarded 15 additional points if the candidate or the candidate’s spouse or common-law partner have a sibling in Canada who is a citizen or permanent resident and is over 18 years old. The sibling relationship may be established through an adoptive relationship.
The upcoming June 2017 changes signal a continuing and gradual shift in IRCC’s mandate for selecting skilled workers to apply for Canadian permanent residence. Whereas prior to November 2016 having a qualifying Canadian job offer made all the difference between receiving an invitation to apply for permanent residence or not, the changes to the CRS points scoring system in the past six months show a change in emphasis to selecting candidates who have strong human capital factors such as language ability and those with pre-existing ties to Canada, whether through family connections or through previous periods of work and study, all of which IRCC believes will ultimately accelerate a candidate’s ability to integrate into Canadian society and become productive and contributing members.
Although the granting of up to an additional 30 points for French language ability and 15 points for sibling relationships in Canada may appear at first glance to be subtle awards, these changes are quite significant in combination with the falling CRS points threshold seen in the past month.
Those candidates who can benefit from these additional points should begin taking steps to create Express Entry profiles, if they have not done so already, and to take the TEF examination to score extra points for French language ability.

By Catherine Sas (Asian Pacific Post)

One of the leading immigration platforms of the Liberal government's 2015 election campaign was to restore the age of dependent children to "under the age of 22".
The previous Conservative government had reduced the age for sponsoring dependent children to under the age of 19 - which in plain language means 18 or younger - as of August 1, 2014.
This left immigrant families having to make the difficult choice of leaving young adult children in their home countries. The Liberals announced this proposed change on October 29, 2016 to allow for public commentary. On May 3, 2017, our current Immigration Minister, formally introduced the increased age for dependents, commenting as follows:
"Raising the age of dependents lets more families stay together. This will bring economic and social gains to our country as it enhances our attractiveness as a destination of choice for immigrants and refugees." The Honorable Ahmed Hussein, Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship
While the announcement of the increased age limit is welcome, it will not be made effective until later this year on October 24, 2017.
Furthermore, it is not retroactive which means that the law will stay as it is until October. For applicants with pending applications, they are able to add their dependents aged 19-21 (at the time that they first applied) to their applications in advance of the changes coming into force by asking for consideration on humanitarian and compassionate grounds. However, applicants are cautioned that this may delay the processing of the overall application for all family members.
For recent immigrants who were not able to include their children aged 19-21 as dependents in their permanent resident applications, they will now able to sponsor them as members of the Family Class when the new regulations come into force on October 24.
This announcement is welcome news for immigrant families and is in keeping with Canada's longstanding policy of re-uniting family members.

(Amitava Kumar is a writer and journalist who teaches at Vassar College. His latest book, “Immigrant, Montana: A Novel,” is forthcoming from Knopf.)

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