It makes quite a headline.

In a Friday news release, Jason Kenney, our new Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism, released the details of his “Action Plan for Faster Immigration.”

“We expect new federal skilled worker applicants, including those with arranged employment, to receive a decision within six-to-12 months compared with up to six years under the old system,” said Minister Kenney.

It sounds quite incredible for a minister who just assumed his portfolio about a month ago to apparently have found some way of processing applications in just six months when his predecessors took about six years to do the same.

The fact is that Kenney plans to do this by simply ignoring the vast majority of the 900,000 or so applicants who have submitted an application, paid a processing fee, and waited overseas patiently for years for a chance to immigrate to Canada legally.

Kenney has divided this group of 900,000 applicants into two: those who applied before February 27, 2008, and those who applied after.

Those who applied before will be stuck waiting, waiting, and waiting for the nod to come here under the “old system.” In fact, they will probably now be waiting longer than they might otherwise have, now that our immigration minister has issued instructions to treat those who came after February 27, 2008 with greater priority provided that they meet one of the following conditions:

• have an offer of “arranged employment” (i.e. approved by HRSDC), or

• be a foreign national living legally in Canada for one year as a temporary foreign worker or an international student, or

• be a skilled worker who has at least one year of experience in one or more of 38 designated occupations: (see the list of occupations at www.cic.gc.ca/eligible)

Applicants who do not meet these criteria will be informed of this and will have their processing fee refunded.

The immigration department is quick to point out that this initiative complies with the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, as if the very act of saying it makes it so. This may or may not be proven to be the case by our courts. In the meantime, the average Canadian will have to rely on their own sense of fairness in evaluating this initiative.

The advantage of processing this way is that Canada can now ignore the applicants’ place in line and cherry pick the candidates it wants in the name of its own national interests.

The drawback is that this departure from the basic rules of queuing-up undermines the fairness of our system and discourages applications from those seeking some sort of certainty in our immigration process.

Also, this purported increase in efficiency won’t actually bring in even one “more” skilled worker to Canada. At the same time that the minister announced this purported increase in efficiency, he also announced that we will be staying the course in the overall annual levels of immigrants at about the 240,000-265,000 mark.

In other words, same levels of immigration…just less fairness.

Guidy Mamann practices law in Toronto at Mamann & Associates and is certified by the Law Society of Upper Canada as an immigration specialist. Reach him confidentially at 416-862-0000 or at metro@migrationlaw.com.