Briton fights Canadian government for residency

A British man is one of eight people taking legal action against the Canadian government over their applications to move to the country.

By Charlotte Santry

A British businessman is fighting a legal battle to force the Canadian government to honour a deal offering residency in exchange for investment cash.

Software firm manager Douglas Kearney is one of eight litigants who applied to a Canadian visa scheme for people worth at least $1.6 million (£1m), with $400,000 (£251,500) to invest.

Under the programme he applied for in 2009, the $400,000 would be handed to the government, which would invest the money locally and hand it back after five years without interest.

In return, eligible investors would receive permanent residency.

The deal proved popular and in 2010 the investment threshold was doubled to $800,000 (£503,000). However, in July 2012 the programme was suddenly frozen.

There are 91,248 applications on file, which the government estimates will take 10 years to process.

Canadian authorities are now considering whether to raise the investment bar further and require investors to have a higher net worth and more business experience.

Mr Kearney is fighting for his application to be assessed within a year, under the original criteria. In the three years since he applied for residency, he has moved to Canada on a temporary visa and transferred his business there.

He said: “I’m left in the position of having to decide whether I should be investing my time and money into a country in which I have no permanent status.”

If the investors’ case is successful, the government will not be able to cancel their applications without being assessed unless they pay them $5m (£3.1m) each in compensation.

The reason cancellation is feared to be a possibility is that in April, 280,000 applications to a different immigration programme, for foreign skilled workers, were torn up after being placed in a queue for up to nine years.

The government said the move was necessary to eliminate a large backlog, speed up processing times and proritise skilled under-35s.

That decision is also being challenged in court and a hearing is due in January.

Software developer Dave Cox, from Oxford, is one of those affected. He applied to move to Ottawa as a skilled worker with his partner in 2007, at a time when files were taking less than three years to be processed.

In preparation for the hoped-for move, the couple moved in with parents, delayed buying a property and Mr Cox turned down a job offer in Portsmouth.

But five years later, they were told their application would never be processed.

Mr Cox said: “[Immigration minister] Jason Kenney seems to be under the illusion that the backlogged applicants have skills that Canada does not need or want. It's not so straightforward, since without assessing them, they'll never really know.”

Lawyer Tim Leahy, who is representing people from the skilled worker and investor lawsuits, said the government had acted without regard “to the image of Canada or to the lives of the applicants”.

Citizenship and Immigration Canada was unable to respond in time.