SKILLED WORKERS: ILLEGAL WORK EXPERIENCE NO LONGER COUNTED

This will end the uncertainty in Skilled Worker applications: if you work illegally in Canada, that experience will not be counted.

No more credit for illegal work experience Canada News Toronto Sun


No more credit for illegal work experience

By Brian Lilley ,Parliamentary Bureau

First posted: Monday, October 03, 2011 07:32 PM EDT Updated: Monday, October 03, 2011 07:37 PM EDT

OTTAWA - The practice of letting foreign lawbreakers reap the reward of citizenship was cancelled after the contradiction was reported on by QMI Agency earlier this year.

Last January QMI Agency revealed a decision by bureaucrats to allow illegal work experience to count as a credit for those who were attempting to gain citizenship in Canada. In one e-mail, obtained through access to information, a civil servant questioned whether there was a difference between illegal work experience in Canada and illegal experience outside the country.

In another e-mail, a senior bureaucrat was straightforward: breaking the law can pay.

"We can count illegal work for PNP (provincial nominee program), but at the same time we need to have a confirmation of the illegal work," wrote Jacqueline Desjardins, senior analyst at Citizenship and Immigration Canada.

But after the policy was exposed, it was denounced by the office of immigration minister Jason Kenney as an outrage.

In a new batch of e-mails obtained by QMI Agency, officials appear to have reversed course, at least when it comes to illegal work in Canada.

Jennifer Castronero, a senior program officer, advised colleagues that a person with illegal work experience in Canada could put the experience on their application but that the applicant "could ultimately be found inadmissible to Canada ... on the basis of having worked in Canada without authorization."

Castronero was responding to a question about an applicant who had been working in the United States illegally since 1997 and wanted to immigrate to Canada.

Castronero said, "The Immigration and Refugee Protection Act (is) silent on this issue," adding, "I have not addressed this issue before."