Slovak Interior Minister discusses immigration in Ottawa, Canada

Slovak Interior Minister Robert Kaliňák met Canadian Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness Minister Steven Blaney and Citizenship and Immigration Minister Chris Alexander in Ottawa on March 2 to discuss bilateral relations, immigration, asylum and the situation in Ukraine. Kaliňák's official working visit to Canada is the first one made by a member of the Slovak Government in five years. The talks included the topic of the Electronic Travel Authorisation (ETA) system, which is slated to be launched by Canada in the summer. The politicians agreed that exchanging travel data is a significant step towards preventing terrorist activities. In addition, the ministers broached the issue of migration and youth mobility. The latter enables young Slovaks aged up to 35 to spend a year in Canada working and travelling. The project has been in place since 2011. According to the currently set quota, Canada accepts 350 young Slovak applicants per year via the programme. Kaliňák's talks with Blaney focused mainly on asylum policy in response to the recently observed increase in the number of Slovaks applying for asylum in Canada. With 469 applicants recorded, Slovakia produced the highest number of asylum seekers among EU countries in 2014. These were mainly people from environments with poor social conditions. "The migration of Slovak people to Canada is due to economic reasons. They [the asylum seekers] pretend to be refugees in order to gain access to social benefits in Canada", observed Kaliňák. To salvage the situation, Slovakia has offered Canada more effective exchanges of information between individual authorities that contact each other when dealing with these issues. Kaliňák is further set to meet Slovak compatriots living in Canada. He will then move on to the USA, where he's expected to meet US Secretary of State John Kerry.