The New African Diaspora

9. Socio-Legal Barriers to the Full Citizenship of Recent African Immigrants in Canada: Some Preliminary Thoughts

9 SOCIO-LEGAL BARRIERS TO THE FULL CITIZENSHIP OF RECENT AFRICAN IMMIGRANTS IN CANADA: SOME PRELIMINARY THOUGHTS Obiora Chinedu Okafor The central thesis that is developed in this chapter is that notwithstanding the understandable and sometimes justified claims that are often made to the effect that we now live in a “multicultural Canada,”1 some important aspects of Canada’s immigration-related policies and practices (and other relevant and related regimes) have combined to ensure that, in reality, far too many recent African immigrants in Canada have remained significantly distant from the attainment of the full citizenship quite admirably promised by Canada’s laudable aspirations to the entrenchment of a multicultural governance framework.2 This thesis will be developed by discussing two illustrative aspects of Canada’s immigrationrelated policies and practices that constitute some of the socio-legal obstacles to the attainment of full citizenship by most recent African immigrants . These obstacles serve to produce and/or reproduce a sense and experience of suboptimal citizenship within this immigrant population. The issues I will discuss are the problems caused by immigration processing backlogs, and the lack of a fair foreign credentials recognition system. These issues will be examined in the same order listed here. But first, two caveats must be entered. The first is that almost all of the difficulties faced by these African immigrants are also experienced by most other “third-world” or “non–Western European” immigrant populations , such as those from the Indian subcontinent or Latin America. Thus the intention here is not really to offer an account of a peculiarly or exclusively African immigrant experience in Canada. African immigrants in Canada do not in general face much greater difficulties in the relevant respects than these other third-world immigrants. I intend, rather, to identify and show how particular policies and practices work in effect to construct recent African (and other) immigrants in Canada as less than full 183 184 Obiora Chinedu Okafor citizens. The second caveat is that although I am intensely aware of the difference between an immigrant and a refugee, and of the dangers of conflating the two categories, I nevertheless use the generic term “immigrant ” in this chapter to include those refugees who have been granted permanent residence, and who therefore stand in substantially the same position as other recent African immigrants in Canada. While a great deal of work has been done on “citizenship,” and scholars from Hannah Arendt to Will Kymlicka and Joseph Carens have ably theorized its meaning,3 the concept of citizenship (at least in its ideal form) that I invoke here denotes and suggests the approximately co-equal and actual enjoyment by all the formally accepted members of a society (virtually as one class) of all the rights and responsibilities attributable to membership in that polity.4 In other words, reference to “citizenship” in this chapter suggests a substantive rather than a formalistic understanding of that concept. I M M I G R A T I O N P R O C E S S I N G B A C K L O G S At some point in the histories of their migration to Canada, a very high proportion of recent African immigrants in Canada will have spouses, children, and/or parents who still live in another country, usually in Africa , and whom these immigrants would quite naturally like to bring to Canada. The text of the relevant Canadian immigration laws, especially Section 3(d) (on family reunion), Section 13(1) (on the sponsorship of the family class), and Section 11 (on their right to be granted permanent resident status) of the Canadian Immigration and Refugee Protection Act (the Act), as well as Section 117 (on the definition of the family class) and Sections 130, 131, and 133 of the Canadian Immigration and Refugee Protection Regulations (the Regulations), do together recognize this imperative need for genuine family physical union or reunion. For this reason, Canadian immigration law does mandate the grant of permanent residence status to the foreign spouses, children, or parents of qualified Canadian citizens or permanent residents as long as the relevant foreign relatives are not otherwise inadmissible to Canada.5 A detailed discussion of the grounds on which these foreign spouses or children could be declared inadmissible and therefore excluded from uniting or reuniting with their Canadian immigrant relative is beyond the scope of this chapter.6 So is a detailed discussion of what it means to be a “qualified” Canadian immigrant who can sponsor...