5. to fulfil our international legal obligations with respect to refugees and to uphold our humanitarian tradition with respect to the displaced and persecuted .
6. to foster development of a strong and viable economy and prosperity of all regions in Canada [but note that immigrants make chiefly for Ontario, Quebec and BC].
7. to maintain and protect health, safety and good order of Canadian society .
8. to promote international order and justice by denying the use of Canadian territory to persons who are likely to engage in criminal activity .
III. MAJOR CATEGORIES OF PERMANENT IMMIGRATION.
How then does the Canadian government seek to achieve all these objectives? How does it balance humanitarian concerns and international obligations with the need for skilled workers who will continue to build the Canadian economy and expand the Canadian tax base?.
What the government has done, since the inception of the immigration program, is divide immigrants into different categories and then to assign those categories a different priority rating and assessment strategy.
A. FAMILY CLASS.
The family class has long been touted as Canada's foremost immigration priority: the idea being that Canadians will establish themselves more quickly when supported by their family members. Out of all the categories of permanent immigration, family class applications are processed the fastest - averaging 6 months to a year for straightforward applications.
From the 1970s until 2002, the family class application was processed in two parts. First, the sponsor in Canada would have to make an application of sponsorship here - which would include filing all financial documents and proof of citizenship showing that (1) they had a legal right to act as sponsor and (2) that they could afford to sponsor a relative. Then, once the sponsorship was approved, the family member would file an application overseas with all their personal documents and could still be called for interview with an immigration officer before being approved for immigration.