Saturday, May 29, 2010

Indian visa uproar prompts Canada to launch immigration-policy review

The Harper government vowed to review its immigration rules after Canadian visa officers in India touched off a furor by barring dozens of people on the grounds that their service in army, police and intelligence units made them complicit in human-rights violations.

Immigration Minister Jason Kenney issued an apology on Friday, saying Canadian immigration officials should never have cast aspersions on India’s institutions. The incidents, he said, showed visa officers have too much latitude.

For a deeply embarrassed Harper government, the pledge and apology were an effort to repair relations with a country it has been assiduously courting: India’s booming economy makes it a major target for attempts to build trade ties to the East.

And at home, the visa flap won’t help Conservative efforts to woo a diaspora of more than one million Indo-Canadians; some were offended by the insult, others by the apology.

Canada and India now chalk up the incidents to overworked immigration officers in the New Delhi embassy, where about half of the 360 staff members work on immigration matters. Canada and India, Mr. Kenney said in a statement, work closely together on security.

“The Government of Canada therefore deeply regrets the recent incident in which letters drafted by public service officials during routine visa refusals to Indian nationals cast false aspersions on the legitimacy of work carried out by Indian defence and security institutions, which operate under the framework of democratic processes and the rule of law,” he said.

The apology didn’t end there: It came with a pledge that Canada will review its policy on declaring foreigners inadmissible. The incident, he added, “has demonstrated that the deliberately broad legislation may create instances when the net is cast too widely by officials, creating irritants with our trusted and valued international allies.”

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With thanks : source : theglobeandmail

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