Reading Ethics Commissioner Bernard Shapiro's report on Judy Sgro was enough to inspire flashbacks.

It's not that I ever signed off on ethically shaky temporary residence permits like Ms. Sgro, or pulled rank to help supporters with their immigration issues like senior aide Ihor Wans, or turned up armed with free pizza at an MP's office in the hope of staying in the country like Harjit Singh. But in a different life, I passed a couple of summers working in a constituency office - not just any constituency office, but a Liberal one in York West, the same riding Ms. Sgro holds. So I know all too well the dangers of an immigration system that gives MPs and their staffers a front-and-centre role.

Most Canadians never enter their local constituency offices, which no doubt leads to a lot of misconceptions - mostly that the offices exist to serve as MPs' eyes and ears on the major issues facing the community and the country, allowing them to go back to Ottawa armed with their voters' views. Truthfully, that's more or less what I was expecting the first day I showed up for work. What I quickly learned was that, in any urban riding with a decent number of new Canadians (or aspiring new Canadians), community political staffers effectively function as de facto immigration consultants.

It's the product, largely, of an immigration system so convoluted and plagued with delays that immigrants and sponsors find it impossible to navigate on their own. With nowhere else to turn, those who can't afford or don't trust immigration lawyers turn up at their MPs' doorsteps.

Often, they're doing so on the mistaken assumption that their representatives are so powerful they can snap their fingers and have applications granted. What they don't realize is that they're putting their faith in political staff who generally have little ability or idea how to make the process work more smoothly - and, in some cases, may not have much interest in doing so anyway.

The office I worked in was a case in point. From the moment we opened our doors each morning until closing time, the phone rang off the hook - and, often, the waiting area overflowed - with applicants and sponsors making their case. And while they tended to make a perfunctory effort to look into applications' status, the staff's main interest - beyond a few friends they went the extra mile for - was simply in giving the appearance of helping.

In one episode I'd particularly like to forget, a colleague left work early and asked me to handle her late-afternoon appointment. Just take notes and look sympathetic, I was instructed - there wasn't much else to be done. What she didn't tell me was that I'd be doing this playacting while a sobbing Ghanian woman detailed the rape and other horrors her daughter was facing in their homeland as she struggled in vain to bring her over.

When I told my co-worker about the episode the next day, she rolled her eyes. It was an alarmingly common reaction.

That's one extreme, perhaps. But as Ms. Sgro's trials and tribulations prove, the other extreme - in which MPs' staff go out of their way to advance applicants' interests - can prove equally offensive.

Most political staff can't help but be motivated by political interests. So when they take an active interest in certain cases, it's usually because they somehow involve an important supporter or demographic.

What makes this all the more unfair is that the one sure way to give applicants what they want is by obtaining a special ministerial permit - something that's much more likely to happen if the MP in question is on the same side of the House as the immigration minister, and doubly so if the MP is the immigration minister. That's why, in the orgy of temporary residence permits handed out during last year's federal election campaign, 74 cases identified Liberal MPs as supporters of the application - including 24 involving Ms. Sgro herself - while just two identified Conservative MPs.

Those going to constituency offices for help, in other words, generally face two possibilities: Either staff will absent-mindedly humour them, at best assisting in understanding the process but giving false hope in the process, or they'll afford them preferential treatment that compromises the system's integrity.

The only solution, and it's an obvious one, is to get MPs out of the process entirely. Hire more immigration officers, open community offices - whatever it takes. Just don't have young, untrained political staffers meddling in a complicated and sensitive process that needs to stay non-partisan.

Until the system is made more efficient and transparent, of course, frustrated and confused applicants will continue to seek politicians' help. Ironically, Ms. Sgro seemed more disposed than most other immigration ministers to undertake the reforms needed to change that. Unless someone else picks up the ball, the politicization of the immigration process that brought her down will continue.