By Nicholas Keung, the Star | Link to Article
Recent government policy changes have made Canadian citizenship more restrictive and are counterproductive to immigrant integration, says a new study by a Canadian think-tank.
By Nicholas Keung, the Star | Link to Article
Recent government policy changes have made Canadian citizenship more restrictive and are counterproductive to immigrant integration, says a new study by a Canadian think-tank.
“Overall, it seems the government intends to make it more difficult or even impossible for some potential new citizens to become Canadians, namely those who are deemed suspicious or less desirable for political, religious or economic reasons,” said the study by the Institute for Research on Public Policy released Thursday.
The impacts of these changes are evident in the decline in the number of Canadian citizenships granted over the last few years, from 176,572 in 2008 to 113,142 in 2012, said the report by University of Ottawa sociology professor Elke Winter.
Since coming into power in 2006, the Conservative government has issued a new citizenship guide that emphasizes Canadian history and the monarchy, launched a public campaign against citizenship fraud, introduced a more demanding citizenship test and tightened language requirements.
Among prospective new citizens, the report said, Muslims seem to be the cultural and religious group deemed most in need of cultural compliance, as reflected by the reference to honour killings and female genital mutilation in the new citizenship study guide and the requirement for new citizens to take the citizenship oath without their face covered.
The more restrictive nature of the citizenship process has caused a massive backlog and lengthened the processing times. As of July 2013, it took 25 months to process routine Canadian citizenship applications and 35 months for cases where applicants were asked to fill out a residence questionnaire to prove their physical presence in Canada.
Read more at http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2014/01/16/citizenship_changes_work_against_immigrant_integration_report_finds.html