In early 2002 Deborah Grey, a Member of Parliament in Edmonton, presents a petition to Canada’s House of Commons signed by hundreds of Canadian citizens and that includes, many First Nations on behalf of the Premakumarans, who came to Canada from the United Kingdom in 1998 as skilled professional immigrants with their three children.

Sadly, the response to this petition from Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC) dated Febru­ary 28, 2002 was typical of the kind of hogwash and hokum, highly placed pen pushers engage in even when serious efforts are made to present a petition to Parliament.

It was, in effect, treated more as a letter sent to Citizenship and Immigration Canada expressing concerns that are replied by a pre-set computer printout with your details like date, name and address changed to fit the letter. This ministry states it receives over 4000 such letters a month, nearly 200 per working day. That paints a depressing picture.

 The ministerial reaction was a vague and imprecise dead end. The Premakumarans, who speak perfect English, have excellent qualifications from British universities and internationally recognized professional institutions; in fact more than a typical British immigrant. The CIC responded to the petition sent on their behalf, with this:

"Canada's Privacy Act prohibits the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration (CIC) from releasing information of an individual without the written consent of the person concerned.”

"Some of the highly skilled immigrants selected by CIC may experience difficulty in meeting li­censing requirements of regulated professions due to any number of factors including insufficient language abilities, inability to obtain Canadian work experience prior to licensing and non- recognition of foreign credentials. Meanwhile, access to unregulated occupations is at the discre­tion of the employer who may be unfamiliar with foreign credentials and experience.

"The new Immigration and Refugee Protection Act provides for a renewed immigration system. The redesigned Skilled Worker selection system will better reflect the needs of the knowledge­ based economy shifting the emphasis from a job specific approach to focus on choosing human capital thus ensuring that the contributions of skilled immigrants are not compromised. New ini­tiatives of the Government of Canada's Innovation Strategy also focus on maximizing the skills immigrants bring to the Canadian labour market, acknowledging the importance of recognition of foreign credentials and education."

 In other words, the CIC doesn’t care about the problems suffered by a fam­ily, who has brought forward issues to the House of Commons. It merely indulges in a frosty run of the mill response to acknowledge they do in fact have a major problem and yet this continues unresolved. Skilled professionals are told they can look forward to a life of relative comfort in Canada. The reality of this is: here we go round the mulberry bush. It’s an embarrassing scene that plays itself out over and over. Canada wants round-the-clock cheap labour to provide for its service sectors and factory lines. A minister's father may have been a carpenter but future carpenters have to come from the immigrant ranks; elites do not indulge in craft labour.

Canada’s educational requirements make sure that immigrants are from the middle class and not from the coolie and slave ranks that laboured in British and French plantations: places that were tea, rubber, coffee and sugar cane factories in colonial regions. The insistence on Canadian Experience on arrival guaran­tees they do not become a threat to the elite of this country.

The Members of the House of Commons should wake up to the a few facts: Prem and Nesa Premakumaran are highly qualified and experienced immigrants who are able to hold top positions in their fields of exper­tise in many parts of the world. They have indisputable grounds to feel cheated. If they were driven to petition to the House of Commons with spontaneous support from the community, then there is something surely wrong with Canada’s immigration policy. The Canadian House of Commons has failed them and in consequence, the thousands of new immigrants placed in such a situation. It tells you that the concept of Canadian Experience is a shoddy joke that even goes against Canada’s own Charter of Rights. But rights in Canada are very selective. Everybody’s equal, but it is obvious that some are less equal than others.

Today this same party who took the trouble to read our petition in Parliament, and promised to help the Premakumarans before coming to power, and now in power… remains silent. It’s deafening.