Canada Trumps America Yet Again: All Immigration Halted
Jose Nino
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The Toronto Sun reports that the Canadian government is halting immigration for the time being in the midst of Wuhan virus outbreak.
According to a federal government official, the immigration program is on hold while travel restrictions stay in place.
The Trudeau government has already set targets of 341,000 permanent residents in 2020 followed by hikes of 351,000 in 2021 and 361,000 in 2022.
“Currently, only Canadian citizens, permanent residents and their immediate family are allowed to board flights to Canada or to enter through the Canada-US border,” said Kevin Lemkay, the press secretary for Immigration Minister Marco Mendicino.
“Despite the current travel restrictions, IRCC continues to accept and process applications,” Lemkay stated.
During this period of travel restriction, the department announced that no application currently in progress will be closed or rejected due to a lack of documentation. Those applications will stay open even if normal timelines for submitting biometrics or a medical exam are not fulfilled.
More than one million Canadians have applied for employment insurance in the last two weeks. The government is expecting about 4 million people applying for emergency benefits in the weeks to come. According to a report from the Parliamentary Budget Officer, Canadian unemployment could reach 15 percent this year, triple what it was before the crisis started.
If Canada wants to maintain social cohesion and serve its citizens adequately, it would put a lid on immigration.
Meanwhile, it’s giving living lessons on immigration to America — which is still importing 85,000 H-1B graduate gig workers during this crisis— on migration restriction.
A truly bizarre scenario.
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