According to reports from media outlets such as the South China Morning Post on March 3, 1335 applicants who submitted applications for the Canadian Federal Investor Immigration program in Hong Kong have hired Toronto immigration lawyer Tim Leahy to represent them in a lawsuit against the Canadian federal immigration authorities. The reason for the lawsuit is that earlier this year, Canada reset all economic immigration applications to zero, preventing these applicants from successfully immigrating to Canada. Leahy stated that he would submit the lawsuit to Federal Court Judge Mary Gleeson on April 4, local time. According to Leahy, although these applicants submitted their applications in Hong Kong, they are almost all wealthy individuals from mainland China.
The 1335 applicants have requested that the federal government either retract its previous decision and agree to reconsider their previously 'blanket rejected' investor immigration applications, or compensate them a total of 5 million Canadian dollars, rather than simply refunding their application fees.
On February 11 of this year, through 'riding' the Economic Action Plan (EAP) of 2014, which is the annual budget, the Canadian Federal Department of Citizenship and Immigration submitted a motion to Parliament indicating that it would seek to terminate the Federal Investor Immigration (IIP) and Federal Entrepreneur Immigration (EN) programs within the year. In fact, the acceptance of new applications for these two economic immigration programs had already been suspended by the immigration department in July 2011 (EN) and July 2012 (IIP), respectively. On the same day, it was announced that 66,000 old cases (59,000 IIP and more than 7,000 EN) would be 'blanket rejected'. After paying and locking in a deposit of 2 million Canadian dollars and waiting for at least more than a year, these applicants were 'returned to square one' without any results, and among these 66,000 applications that were 'blanket rejected', it is reported that at least 57,000 were from mainland China. The Federal Border Services data indicated that, by July of last year, there were still 66,423 old cases pending, of which 50,131 applications came from Hong Kong.
As early as March 4 of this year, ten applicants from Beijing announced that they had sued the Canadian immigration authorities in federal court. At that time, Canadian media predicted with concern that there would be more 'blanket rejection' victims following suit, which could become overwhelming for Canada, which follows common law. The number of plaintiffs in this joint lawsuit has increased to 1,335, making this concern even more prominent.
The South China Morning Post quoted Leahy as saying that this lawsuit involves significant costs, possibly reaching 18 million Canadian dollars, and he has emailed each client detailing the probability of success in this case and the costs involved, urging them to think carefully.
Many critics have accused the Canadian federal government of intentionally bundling the controversial anti-economic immigration legislation with the EAP to 'ride the wave', while lawyers argue that shifting the responsibility for 'long waiting times' onto the applicants is unfair, especially given that the Quebec provincial investor immigration program continues to accept new applications. Some analysts have pointed out that even if the Canadian federal immigration authorities have issued a 'blanket rejection' decision, its actual implementation will not occur until after the EAP is passed on June 26 of this year.
Leahy stated that, in addition to Hong Kong, some applicants participating in the joint lawsuit are also from Ankara, London, Singapore, Paris, New Delhi, Cartagena, and Pretoria.
