Brussels, 09/04/2010 (Agence Europe) - Il is possible that Canada will re-introduce a visa requirement for Slovakians wishing to visit Canada if there is any further increase in the number of people from Slovakia requesting asylum in Canada. The snowballing of asylum requests from Slovakia is forcing the Canadian government to closely monitor the situation, according to documents reported upon by French Canadian newspaper La Presse on 7 April. Countries exempt from the visa requirement are aware that if they do not respect Canada's visa exemption conditions, then Canada may re-introduce the visa recruitment, warns a Canadian Immigration and Citizenship Ministry document dated 18 February 2010 on requiring Slovakian citizens to apply for visas to visit Canada. In June 2009, a similar document highlighted Canadian government concern at the number of asylum requests originating from Czech nationals and in July this year, Canada re-introduced the visa requirement for Czechs and Mexicans (see EUROPE 10086). Since 1 March 2008, Slovak tourists have been exempt from the visa requirement for visits to Canada, but since then the number of asylum requests lodged by Slovakians in Canada has shot up from 74 in 2008 to 355 in 2009, accounting for just over 1% of all asylum requests lodged in Canada, according to La Presse. In 2009, the greatest number of asylum requests in Canada were by Hungarians (2,500 applications). Canada can remove the visa exemption if the number of asylum seekers from any country reached 2.5% of the total number of asylum applications in a year. The Canadian government says that it does not have any plan at the moment to require Slovakians to have visas. In order to reduce the number of asylum applications in Canada from democratic countries that respect human rights, Canadian Immigration and Citizenship Minister Jason Kenney published plans last week to change the process of dealing with refugees. The draft legislation is due to be voted upon in June 2010 and come into force in the summer of 2011. (B.C./transl.fl)