Canadian court victory for group of Chinese migration applicants

Would-be migrants who were dumped from Canada's visa queue when Ottawa axed its millionaire migration scheme have won the right to challenge the decision in the courts, in a key legal victory for the mostly Chinese applicants.

A group of 95 disgruntled applicants were granted leave by Canada's Federal Court on Friday to seek a judicial review of February's decision that resulted in about 50,000 rich Chinese having their immigration applications terminated.

Toronto immigration lawyer Tim Leahy, who organised the case, said on Saturday that anyone wishing to join the legal action should do so before an initial hearing in Toronto in five weeks.

Leahy, who heads the Forefront Migration consultancy, said the decision to simply eliminate backlogged applications when it was announced that the Immigrant Investor Programme was being ended represented "moral bankruptcy" by the Canadian government.

Under the controversial scheme, applicants worth a minimum of C$1.6 million (HK$11.2 million) received visas for themselves and their immediate family in return for loaning the government C$800,000 interest-free for five years, after which the loan was returned in full.

The programme has been a key means of migration for rich Hongkongers and mainland Chinese over the past 28 years. Immigration data provided by Leahy showed that of the 66,434 undecided individual visa applications in the federal immigrant investor backlog as of last July, 50,131 had been lodged via Hong Kong. Virtually all are believed to be mainland Chinese.