New Delhi: The Canadian Government has reversed a 10-year-old order of its New Delhi mission which said "the names Kaur and Singh do not qualify for the purpose of immigration to Canada."
Ottawa took the decision after a storm of complaints from the Sikhs. The last names 'Singh' and 'Kaur' are almost synonymous with Sikhs. But as per the decreee of the Delhi mission, if they’re trying to get a visa to Canada, this could very well become a problem.
The problem arose after Canadian immigration officials dusted out a 10-year-old, little-known rule that asks Sikh visa applicants with last names Singh or Kaur to change them. "There are too many of them," officials say, pointing to difficulties in maintaining a database with similar names.
The new rule left the Sikhs in India as well as in Canada fuming at what they see as racial profiling. Most of the world's 30 million Sikhs are given the name Singh, for men, or Kaur, for women, usually as a middle name.
In Canada, the controversy erupted on Wednesday after a Calgary-based woman, Tarvinder Kaur, learnt that her husband Jaspal Singh’s application for permanent residency had been delayed for well over a month because of his last name.
‘‘The names 'Kaur' and 'Singh' do not qualify for the purpose of immigration to Canada,’’ the Canadian High Commission in New Delhi wrote to Jaspal Singh in a letter dated May 17, 2007.
The report was carried widely in the Canadian media on Wednesday. The media reports said the policy preventing people from migrating to Canada with Singh and Kaur as last names has been in place for 10 years and was not applicable to other last names.
"The reason for the policy is that it helps officials with the paperwork and allows them to identify people’s files quickly and accurately. You can imagine you wouldn’t want your file to be confused with someone else’s," a Canadian newspaper quoted a spokesperson for Citizenship and Immigration, Canada, as saying on Wednesday.
Sikhs branded the policy as nothing but "racism at its worst."
"The rule has a thin coating of legitimacy but, when you scratch the surface, you simply cannot find a trace of logic or common sense in it,’’ T Sher Singh, a Canada-based lawyer, journalist and writer, told a Canadian newspaper. According to him, the policy brings back shadows Canada’s ugly past.
Many Sikh portals posted email addresses and telephone numbers of Canadian high commissions, urging Sikhs to express their views clearly in their respective countries.
The issue was taken up immediately by the World Sikh Organisation. And as protests grew, Citizenship and Immigration Canada announced that it was dropping the policy. The Canadian authorities called the whole thing "a misunderstanding based on a poorly worded letter."
Canada's New Delhi immigration office is one of the busiest in the world. Canadian Immigration Minister Diane Finley refused to comment, but according to statements from the department, the policy asking for a different name was meant to help speed up applications and prevent cases of mistaken identity due to the commonness of Singh.
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