08-11-12
Over the past few years the programs available under the Canadian Immigration system have changed drastically. Canadian immigration minister Jason Kenney claims that he is changing Canadian immigration programs to better select individuals who are likely to become economically established in Canada. Kenney states that the change will start to become apparent in the economic immigration targets for this year.
The Federal Skilled Worker program has been completely overhauled including a completely new points distribution, in order to give greater weight to work experience, strong proficiency in either English or French and youth. The new program will also require an evaluation of educational credentials so that individuals will be more likely to be able to practice their given profession in Canada, instead of having to accept jobs they are overqualified for. There is also going to be a new program for skilled trades.
The government’s new promise is to keep processing times under one year which is a significant decrease from some programs of the past where applicants waited up to 10 years for a visa. How he was able to do this (ie: by deciding not to process more than 280,000 applicants who had been waiting in line for all of those years) is a completely different story. For the first time quotas on the number of applications (not visas) to be accepted also helped to dramatically reduce processing times. With the new quotas in place it is important for individuals to apply quickly when they find out that they are eligible or risk losing their opportunity to apply for the year, under the criteria for that year.
Another positive change came to the Canadian Experience Class, where it was announced that the work experience requirement will be reduced to one year of full-time, paid, work experience in Canada before an individual can apply for permanent residence. However, it remains that there are many temporary workers here who will not have access to this or any other programs because the skill level of their position or their language skills disqualify them from this program.
Overall critics say that the recently implemented changes are good as a whole, there are still people who are left out in the cold. So, as with most things Canadian immigration still has much room for improvement.
If you think you may be eligible for Canadian immigration you should act fast, to not be left in the cold, contact us to find out how we can help you.
