MCC has mixed response to immigration review

WINNIPEG, MAN.

Mennonite Central Committee made a presentation to the federal government's Immigration Legislation Review Panel in Winnipeg on March 2. MCC strongly supports some of the proposed recommendations for changing Canada's immigration laws but has significant concerns about others. Specifically:
  • MCC strongly supports the recommendations to create a separate Protection Act which differentiates the goals of refugee protection from those of immigration.
  • MCC is not prepared at this point to endorse the proposed role for organizations like MCC in the overseas selection of refugees for re-settlement, arguing that that role is better left with the federal government.
  • MCC would like more clarity on how private sponsorship will be affected under the proposed changes.
  • The recommendations propose that the Immigration and Refugee Board (which decides who is allowed to stay in Canada and is composed of appointed lay citizens) should be replaced by civil servants in the Department of Immigration. MCC disagrees, saying that while the IRB is not a perfect structure and changes could probably be made, it nevertheless offers a protection system that is fair, open and independent.
  • MCC believes that the requirement that all future immigrants must already speak English of French is discriminatory.
  • MCC believes the large "landing fee" which refugees are to be charged is inappropriate.
  • MCC is deeply concerned with a recommendation which would implement safe third country provisions. This essentially means that refugees travelling through a third country enroute to Canada, would be returned to the previous country. MCC feels that this would seriously weaken the protection given to refugees.
  • MCC is concerned that the review is attempting to deal with very significant changes to immigration and refugee policy in an unnecessarily restricted time frame.
  • MCC believes that justice, openness and fairness should remain the primary tenets of Canada's immigration and refugee policies.

    MCC has been involved in immigration and refugee concerns since 1920, when it helped Mennonites living in famine-stricken Ukraine. Thousands of Mennonites--most of whom could not speak any English--came to Canada as immigrants in the 1920s, while others came as displaced people after World War II. Since 1979, Mennonite and Brethren in Christ churches have sponsored some 10,000 refugees to come to Canada and committed over $50 million of their own resources to do this.

    from an MCC Canada news release

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