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Candelaria Saldivar Explains How Broken Immigration Is
posted (February 8, 2017)

So, while PUP Senator Courtenay was able to leave Senate Hearings before the session was done, the public officer on the stand wasn’t so lucky. That’s because Former Immigration CEO Candelaria Saldivar-Morter was in charge of the Immigration Department for a huge portion of the period which the Auditor General and her team looked into. 

As viewers are aware, she’s also Defence Minister John Saldivar’s sister, and though she had a controversial exit from the Public Service, she asserts that she was a major part of the reform efforts that the Immigration Department made after the Department became embattled with scandal after scandal.

That’s just the point she made today in the Senate Hearings after hours of testimony and cross examination. There’s a lot from her comments today, and we’ll not be able to share all of it with you in  tonight’s newscast, here’s a very revealing moment from the conversations when Saldivar told the Senate that band aid fixes will not repair what’s broken at the Immigration Department. Here’s that moment of real talk that the former CEO engaged in:

Candelaria Saldivar-Morter - Former CEO In Charge of Immigration
“For me, yes, you're saying 'oh, there is these issues that the Auditor General reports’, but nothing in these auditor General's reports was a surprise to us, and that is the reason why we went into the whole session, and we put so much emphasis, especially myself, in terms of getting the working group to push to come up with a recommendation because we realized that if we stay and sit back and try to fix all the little things within, we will still have the problems at the end of the day. We had to come up with a holistic approach to fixing the problems at the immigration and nationality services department. And I continue to emphasize that this is all we can do at this point. Because for me, what the Auditor General put out, myself and Minister Hulse knew. And I think the public knew. What we need is a fix and until we look at that fix, we could always point fingers, and we could always say. But we need to do that…â€￾

"We tried - the Ministry tried, like I said, worked hand in hand with the Director of Immigration. But I don't know if during the period, 2012 to when I left, 2015, we had so many issues that side-lined whatever kinds of work that we wanted to do that we had to deal with, like emergency issues. We had the issue with Dyck, Wilhem Dyck, and then after that, we had the issue with Won Hong Kim, and then, and so, each time you tried to put things in place, you're side-lined by some scandal, which takes you away from trying to put in place some of the things. But, I don't know how to put this. One of the things - One of the reasons I put emphasis on the whole restructuring and reform was because no band aid fix - there was no band aid fix for what was wrong at the Immigration and Nationality Services Department. And that is why we put so much efforts, weekends, all-day session, in trying to push that forward. Because we realized that no matter what band aid fix we did. We would still be having a lot of issues. And that is my person feeling in terms of Immigration and Nationality Services. There is no band-aid fix for it. We need a complete reform and restructuring in order that these issues could be corrected. And I am talking about the systems, the resources, the human Resources. We need a complete reform and structuring. Otherwise, 10 years from now, we'll be having another Senate Hearing."

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