harder citizenship test makes sense, but government should have done more

When new and old Canadians celebrated the 145th birthday of Canada, a piece from The Globe and Mail revealed How applicants are stumbling on the final step to becoming Canadians.

Visa application form from Citizenship and Immigration Canada. (iStockPhoto / Getty)

Is it reasonable to raise the bar for citizenship? I say Yes. But this necessitates extra support from the government, which is unfortunately missing. 

Higher standards for citizenship are definitely constructive in the long run as they push new Canadians to work harder on, if nothing else, their language skills. This will benefit both the immigrants and Canadian society because better language skills will enhance their employment prospects and overall well-being in the country for sure. The intention of this test is not to bar them from obtaining citizenship, but help them integrate.

Now the only issue is relative fairness. That is, if certain groups (the Globe and Mail article mentioned Afghanistan community, for instance) have more difficulties passing the test due to poorer education backgrounds or tougher life-situations, the federal government should make sure they receive proper assistance prior to their tests. Either should the government offer subsidised preparation programs (just as how it provides ESL classes to new immigrants), or  compensate local ethnic groups for offering such classes. This type of assistance programs should have been made available simultaneously when the citizenship test was reformed in 2010. The costs, however, are then inevitably imposed on other residents who pay tax.

At the end I think this is a paradox about fairness: either domestic taxpayers or certain immigrant groups have to sacrifice their interest (and therefore claim to have been treated unfairly) for the average new Canadian to become a little more educated about their shared homeland.