Canada’s Parliament has asked PM Justin Trudeau to reintroduce visas for Romanians, which have been lifted in December last year. The Canadian prime minister had to give explanations in Parliament on this topic after an MP had reproached that the visa lift for Romanians had been operated without a previous review of the consequences, while accusing that the organized crime groups are actually enjoying the liberalization of the visas.
The debate comes amid an explosion of asylum seeking requests filed by Romanians. Twice more visa requests than in one year have been filed in just two months.
MP Micheele Rempel asked PM Trudeau if he considers reintroducing visas for Romanians, arguing it was known about the highest number of false asylum seeking applications filed by the organized crime groups. She revealed that over 1,000 asylum seeking requests have been filed to the Border Service within the five-month period after the visas had been lifted.
In retort, the Canadian premier said that Canada is working with the Romanian authorities on this issue and there are ongoing discussions right now to ensure that organized crime groups and others don’t use and take advantage of the Canadian immigration system, Digi24 reports.
The Canadian authorities lifted visas for Romanians who will travel to Canada for tourist purposes and whose stays will not get beyond six months, regardless of the type of the passport, as of December 2017. The visa lifting goes for the tourist journeys, for the visits paid to the family and friends or for business purpose.
However, Romanians still need to have an Electronic Travel Authorization – eTA in the cases of trips by plane, which is available only at www.Canada.ca/eTA/Romania.
The electronic traveling authorization (eTA) will be valid for five years (or, depending on the case, will remain valid until the passports itself expires).
“The liberalization of the visa regime for the Romanian citizens who want to travel to Canada represents the materialization of the Romanian authorities’ sustained efforts over the past years upon the Canadian authorities, both at bilateral level and also at trilateral format, with the endorsement of the European Commission. The Canadian authorities’ decision represent the final stage of the liberalization visa regime, started on May 1st , when certain categories of Romanian citizens received the go-ahead to benefit of this regime (the ones who already held a temporary residence visa obtained in the past 10 years or a valid non-immigrant visa for the USA),” reads a press release issued by the Foreign Affairs Ministry in November last year.