Immigration and World

ndp: With the event less than a week away, and visa concerns mounting, the NDP is demanding Immigration Minister John McCallum hold an emergency meeting with organizers. "We learned that there are a great number of people who cannot get temporary visas to come to Canada to participate in the World Social Forum," said the NDP immigration critic, Jenny Kwan. "This is extremely troubling." World Social Forum to focus on nuclear disarmament Next week meeting in Montreal marks the first time the event — which brings together activists and leftist intellectuals from around the world — has been held in a North American city, according to CBC. NDP immigration critic Jenny Kwan called the visas issues "extremely troubling." Organizers said they issued around 2,000 invitation letters to assist delegates in acquiring Canadian visas. More than 10,000 delegates are expected to attend the event, which bills itself as a progressive alternative to the World Economic Forum held each year in Davos, Switzerland. In what they described as a preliminary estimate, they said as many as 70 per cent of these delegates had their applications denied. Haiti athletes invited to Canada face visa obstacles Calling on Ottawa to fix the problem ​"If the massive number of refusals raises indignation, the reasons invoked by Canadian officials arouses anger," the organizers said in a news release circulated Friday. Most of the denied delegates came from the Democratic Republic of Congo, Morocco, Iran, Nigeria, Haiti and Nepal. (www.immigrantscanada.com). As reported in the news.