Sadat Banoo vs. Jason Kenney

گزارش — 03 اکتبر 2012

The secrets and lies of an astutely-made decision

Majid Bastami

This year, for many of Iranians like Sadat Banoo, the joy and happiness of “Mother’s day” was double; the coincidence of this day in Iranian calendar (Saturday, May 12th) and Canadian calendar (May 13th), which had been completed with the sweet chattering of Sadat Banoo’s little grandchild from thousands of kilometers farther and could be full of laughter and good memories. But it was not like that and the conversation between her and her daughter who is going to give birth to her second child in midsummer, was full of sighs and cries. A week earlier, the postman returned the big parcel of documents she had submitted to the Canadian embassy in Tehran, without the payment slips not included; without any response, any explanation, or any sign of respect to the applicant. When she went through the heavy traffic of the capital, and reached the Canadian embassy in Tehran, worried and anxious, with painful legs because of arthritis , and saw a long queue of people protesting about the same problem, she found out that she is not the only person suffering from the same worries, and anxiety and the feeling of humiliation and confusion, and that there are a lot of people with the same problem. When she finally entered the embassy after insisting, she heard pre-determined responses without any feelings: “All requests were sent to Ankara; it is not clear when the results will be disclosed; please wait.” Sadat Banoo does not have satellite receiver in her house, nor does she listen to news, but since she follows up this problem, she found out that an Iranian is a member of parliament in Canada, and somebody in the visa-issuing ministry can speak Farsi, and his name is Nejati. But even he did not say anything other than what has been told in the embassy and just repeated the same sentences. Time passes quickly and she is afraid that the time of birth giving of her daughter would come and she would not be there. “What would my daughter do there in a foreign country, alone, without any help?”

Main justification” “Iran is like a few other countries.”

The minister and his colleagues in the ministry have frequently emphasized that this decision was not made just for the Tehran office and that the same happened in some other countries, including Germany, and Japan. Does this explanation help better understanding the problem? Is it appropriate to compare Iran to five other countries?

Let’s start with discussing Iran’s position among immigrant-supplying countries (through getting a Canadian permanent residence visa). Iran’s position is so important, because the visa office of the Canadian embassy in Tehran is serving tens of thousands of applicants for a temporary visa and at the same time, is indirectly, serving thousands of tax-payer Iranian-Canadian citizens; citizens which, according to statistics and surveys, have a significant position in terms of economic activities, entrepreneurship and investment, and participation in educational and academic fields.

According to the statistics of the immigration office, while every year about 250000 receivers of the permanent residence visa from about 200 countries set foot on the Canadian soil as newcomer immigrants, the origin of more than 50 percent of them is one of top 10 countries providing immigrants to Canada, out of which, Iran ranked seventh in 2010. In the last three decades, Iran has always ranked between sixth and ninth in this list. It means that the Iranian immigrants’ community has been one of the most increasing immigration communities in Canada, which still has a lot of needs to be established. One of these needs is the fulfillment of emotional needs of these people through reunion with their family members at least in a few months of the year; the need which requires Iranians to get a visa.

Now, we should see how the situation of visa issuing offices in these ten countries is. A quick investigation shows that among these ten countries (Philippines, India, China, United Kingdom, United States, France, Iran, United Arab Emirates, Morocco, and Korea, in 2010, in this order), Iran is the only country in which the Canadian immigration office does not have any kind of visa issuing office, permanent or temporary, while in some of those countries, there are up to five active offices and in all of them, there is at least one office providing full services (i.e. all kinds of permanent and temporary visas).

This issue by itself shows how misleading and far from reality it is to compare Iran to say, Japan or Germany. When the formal website of the office claims that “The transfer of visa services from a visa office to somewhere else is not uncommon.”, it neither lies, nor does it intend to tell the truth!

Comparing Iran to Japan, Germany, and other countries can be criticized from two more viewpoints. First, these countries are not anymore significant providers of immigrants to Canada for years and if anyone from them immigrates to Canada, his/her relatives do not need a visa to go to Canada and even if they need a visa, they do not have any difficulty sending their passports to another office and getting visa through mail. But Iranians have problems in this regard; they have to have a costly, difficult trip to Ankara. This is one of the serious criticisms of Iranian groups and communities to this decision of the immigration office.

We can add other difficulties and problems to these difficulties, such as paying the visa issuance fee in foreign currencies, which is especially difficult for parents and the elderly. It seems that the officials of the immigration office have forgotten that Canada is one of the countries which completely boycotted Iranian banking system and now it requires Iranian citizens to pay the required fees through the same boycotted system.

Do any of the 5 above-mentioned countries have one of these features?

Key Question: Was this the best way to manage this decision?

Recently, justifying the deletion of 280000 federal skilled worker files before February 2008, Mr. Kenney talked about the mismanagement of the previous governments in immigration programs and the expenses such decisions inflict on both the Canadian society and themselves. The term he uses to refer to the performance of “others” to describe this situation is “mismanagement”. He usually forgets that his administration has been managing the country and its immigration system for 6 years and after ratifying C-50, even in the minority conservative government, he had enough power and authority to make the biggest piling of files in the history of the immigration to Canada (in terms of the time period for making the pile) during 2 years and to disrupt the lives of more than 150000 people with his unfulfilled promises. If we use his decision to close the visa office of the Canadian embassy in Tehran as a criterion to distinguish between proper management and mismanagement, it will be sufficient.

Both in the website of the embassy and in a letter from the media section of the office to Parnian, it is pointed out that “This decision had been made a long time ago.” The question is how come in this situation no information has been gathered about the problems this decision will cause. How come hasn’t Warsaw visa office, which was in charge of processing the federal skilled workers files about Iranians known for a month how to get Iranians’ passport to insert visa? (just because the Polish embassy in Tehran did not give visa to Iranians to go to Warsaw to get the Canadian visa!) During this claimed long time, wasn’t it possible to consult with a number of influential, reputable members of Iranian community (even from pros of the conservative party)? Does Mr. Kenney care about these people and associations only during electoral campaigns and taking photos, and do they disturb his proper “management” otherwise? In a matter of fact, what was the urge to quickly enforce this decision, when the budget bill had not been voted yet? Couldn’t this decision be enforced gradually? That is, the visa office of the Canadian embassy could continue its activities for the requests sent before the month of May and only new requests could be sent to Ankara, so that on the threshold of summer, the process of issuing visas would not be stopped and those who have been waiting for a long time would not be confused, and at the same time, the immigration office would have the time to patiently resolve the execution problems of the transfer of new requests to Ankara, without any disruption in the process and …. These solutions and tens of other solutions could be used, but the problem is that all these solutions come from our ill minds which do not have the required managerial skills. Management is exactly what Mr. Kenney and his colleagues have been doing in the last 5-6 years in Canadian immigration office, the result of which were stoppage of almost all immigration programs, including skilled worker, entrepreneurship, investment,…., immoral deletion of the files of about 280000 waiting applicants, suspension of 130000 applicants who had been promised to get a visa within 6 months, from the first list of the jobs of the federal skilled worker program (MI1) for three years , stoppage of parents sponsorship program, great number of rejections for super-visa applications despite a lot of advertising, and enormous expenses, and …. Yes, management is whatever he does!

A common language, but no sympathy and understanding

Sadat Banoo does not understand these statistics, figures, and all this fuss. Every day she is waiting for a letter allowing her to be with her only daughter during difficult days of birth giving; the daughter who has nobody else in Canada. This is a problem the single managers of the immigration office and those whose relatives live near them, are not able to understand. That is why their cliché, monologue answers lack any humanitarian feeling to calm down people like Sadat Banoo, even if that answer is heard from the Farsi-speaking spokesman of the immigration office. Sadat Banoo does not need somebody who can speak the same language as her, but rather she needs somebody who can understand and sympathize with her.