South-Asians wait longer than any other group to get into Canada, according to startling new numbers from a Freedom of Information request.

There are currently 145,556 skilled workers awaiting Canadian visas from New Delhi. But only 9,245 economic-class visas will be issued this year. At this rate, with no new applications, it will take 16 years for Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC) to clear the backlog – longer than for any other region in the world.

"It shouldn’t matter where you apply," says Vancouver lawyer Richard Kurland, who got the numbers from CIC after jumping through bureaucratic hoops for several years.

"But right now it takes longer to process an applicant from New Delhi than an identically qualified applicant somewhere else because we’re choosing first come, first serve based on location. And that’s the point that’s discriminatory."

CIC sets discretionary targets for each of its offices around the world.

Kurland claims that because CIC works on a target system, or what he calls a quota system, CIC inevitably ends up creating longer wait times for certain groups.

But at a press conference in April, Deputy Minister of CIC Richard Fadden said there are no number restrictions, or quotas, placed on Canadian embassy missions overseas, as "that would be discrimination."

Kurland says using the word target instead of quota is simply a matter of semantics.

"If you deliver exactly the target and you can’t exceed it and you can’t underachieve it, it’s a quota," he argues. "If this ever reached the court, there’s no doubt in my mind that it would be determined to be a quota."

Danielle Norris, spokesperson for CIC, says she cannot comment on whether the numbers are in fact quotas as CIC speaks only in terms of targets. And ultimately, she adds, targets are not the reason why applicants from New Delhi must wait longer.

"India is the number one source country (for immigrants)," she says. "It’s all relative. There’s just a lot of people coming through that area."

As a result, targets for New Delhi are higher than in other parts of the world, adds Norris.

But by creating targets for overseas missions without admitting to a quota system, CIC is playing a game of politics, says Kurland.

U.S. immigration policy uses quotas. But in 1976, Canada decided not to follow suit, instead allowing applicants to apply anywhere in the world. This meant that if the process got jammed up in one place, people would be allowed to try their luck somewhere else, where the waiting times were shorter.

However, in 2001 the law changed, according to Kurland, forcing applicants to apply only at the visa office nearest to them.

The result, adds Kurland, are "processing ghettos."

"To use the word quota would be to admit that Canada is running an American-style system," says the immigration lawyer.

In an attempt to shorten queues, the federal Conservatives recently introduced Bill C-50 claiming that it would give them the necessary tools to better manage immigration processing by selecting immigrants that fit with Canada’s migration and labour priorities.

"The Ministry will be able to give instructions and create preliminary steps people have to meet," says Norris. "The idea is to process people at a faster rate so if you don’t meet the first step, you won’t get processed but you are obviously encouraged to apply again."

On June 9, Bill C-50 passed on a 120–90 vote in the House of Commons, its third and final reading.

In the past, the Conservative government claimed that without Bill C-50 there would be 1.5 million applicants waiting by 2012.

However, as the new legislation will not apply to those in the backlog, but only to those who have applied on or after February 27, 2008, critics accuse the Conservative government of selling C-50 under false premises.

Norris admits that there has been "miscommunication from the beginning," but by curtailing the number of applications waiting to be processed, the backlog will not grow.

But critics are concerned that Bill C-50 gives minister Diane Finely over-reaching powers while denying rights to potential immigrants who would otherwise be qualified.

"The government’s removal of the right to a visa is the largest stripping away of rights in Canada since1970 when the War Measure Act was invoked," says Kurland, referring to legislation that imprisoned "enemy aliens."

"The system is not broken, any more than a car is broken simply because the driver refuses to apply the brakes."

This year Canada will accept between 240,000 and 260,000 new immigrants.