Canada Not Viewed As Top Destination for Foreign Students: Foreign Affairs Dept

Posted on November 14, 2012 by CICS Immigration Team

'Old Vic' at the University of Toronto (U of T). The U of T was one of the few Canadian educational institutions perceived as a world class post-secondary institution by survey participants in China, India and Brazil

A Foreign Affairs department commissioned study completed in March finds that Canada is not seen as a top destination for prospective international students in Brazil, China, and India.

The sobering Ipsos-Reid report says that “Canada is a not top-of-mind destination for foreign study for participants in any of the three countries except with Brazilian participants interested in language studies” and that “there is no awareness that Canada has world-class educational establishments”.

Despite the poor survey results, Canada attracts nearly 100,000 international students every year, who contribute an estimated $6.5 billion annually to the Canadian economy.

There have been several high-profile calls on Canadian post-secondary institutions and governments this year to build on this success and increase Canada’s share of the international education market.

The federal government has heeded the calls and made efforts to promote the Canadian education brand, as reported by a Globe and Mail article on Tuesday:

Initiatives designed to forge educational links have been a feature of Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s strategy to deepen economic ties with Asia during his trips to China and India this year.

Meanwhile, Governor-General David Johnston travelled to Brazil in the spring with 30 university presidents in tow, one of the biggest delegations abroad to push the benefits of Canadian education.

The Ipsos-Reid study recommends that the federal government improve the “Imagine Education in Canada” campaign, which it promotes internationally.

Specifically, it says the campaign should provide more information on the advantages of Canadian education to foreign students, like the global school ranking of Canadian post-secondary institutions, the top majors offered, and famous/successful people who have attended Canadian universities.

It also recommends advertising the practical advantages of living in Canada, like the high standard of living, good value for money, and the natural beauty of the country.

Canadian Prime Minister Lays Out His Vision For Immigration To Canada

Posted on November 14, 2012 by CICS Immigration Team

Prime Minister Stephen Harper told the Globe and Mail that Canada will need to compete for high value immigrants as other country look to immigration to solve their fiscal problems

In an interview on Saturday with the Globe and Mail, Canada’s largest national newspaper, Prime Minister Stephen Harper expounded in length on his vision for Canada’s immigration programs.

He told the Globe that competition for skilled international workers would heat up over the coming years, as “the demographic changes .. the aging population, start to bite, in many developed countries”.

He trumpeted his government’s achievements in reforming what he called the old “passive pro-immigration policy” which “operated on receiving applications and processing them in order” and had left his government with “backlogs of hundreds and hundreds of thousands of applications”.

He said his government is trying to shift to an “activist policy” where Canada goes out and recruits the immigrants it needs, and when it receives applications, “prioritize them to the country’s objectives.”

The Prime Minister said that as the rest of the developed world increases its immigration intake, Canada would need the activist immigration policy to “compete, and make sure we get the immigrants both in terms of volumes and particular attributes: skills, expertise and investment capacity.”

Under the Conservative government, Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC) has legislatively wiped out the 280,000 application Federal Skilled Worker (FSW) program backlog, and frozen acceptance of new applications under both the FSW program and the Federal Immigrant Investor program as it re-designs the programs and reduces the backlogs.

CIC has also suspended the parent and grandparent sponsorship programs and replaced them with a ‘Super Visa’ that allows foreign parents and grandparents of Canadian citizens and landed immigrants to visit Canada for up to ten years.

Immigration Department: 1 Year Canadian Experience Class Launching Jan 2013

Posted on November 13, 2012 by CICS Immigration Team

Citizenship and Immigration Minister Jason Kenney tweeted more details in recent days about coming changes to the Canadian Experience Class and Federal Skilled Worker programs

The length of time that a temporary foreign worker needs to have worked full-time in the Canada to qualify for permanent residence under the Canadian Experience Class (CEC) immigration program will be reduced from 24 months to 12 months in January 2013, according to a tweet by Citizenship and Immigration Minister Jason Kenney.

The long expected change in the CEC program’s work experience requirement is intended to increase the share of immigrants that come through the program, as Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC) considers immigrants with Canadian work experience as more likely to be successful in integrating into Canada’s labour market than those who are admitted under more traditional routes like the Federal Skilled Worker (FSW) program.

The announcement on the date of the CEC program rule change was made in a response to a tweet directed to Kenney, who is quite active on the micro-blogging site, on November 5th:

@KaushikJay The new 1 year threshold for high-skilled temporary foreign workers to qualify for CDN Experience Class will start January, 2013

In a series of tweets on November 4th, Kenney also described when and in what form the revamped FSW program will be launched.

He posted that the final details for the relaunched program would be released in the “1st half of 2013” and that there would only be “a very limited number of new applications” accepted in 2013, to help CIC “asses [sic] the new grid & educational evaluation”.

He also posted that CIC’s goal was to launch the new Expression of Interest model for the FSW program “around late 2014 / early 2015”.

CIC placed a moratorium on accepting new applications through the FSW program in July 2012, to give it time to deal with the program’s pending application backlog and to design new selection rules and assessment procedures that it says will make the program more economically beneficial for Canada and its application review process faster.

Immigration Minister Calls on Regulators to Reduce Barriers for Canada’s Immigrants

Posted on November 8, 2012 by CICS Immigration Team

Citizenship and Immigration Minister Jason Kenney is seeking the cooperation of Canada's self-regulatory organizations in making it easier for new Canadians to get licensed to work in their field in Canada

Citizenship and Immigration Minister Jason Kenney attended the annual conference for Canada’s self-regulatory organizations (SROs) today and asked for their cooperation in helping recent immigrants to Canada become licensed in their field.

The Canadian Regulators Conference, held in Ottawa on November 8th and 9th, is organized by the Canadian Network of National Associations of Regulators (CNNAR), an association made up of some of Canada’s largest SROs, including the Canadian Nurses Association, the Ontario College of Teachers, and the Federation of Medical Regulatory Authorities of Canada.

CNNAR’s annual conferences are intended to foster information sharing on strategies and best practices among regulatory organizations, and are likely seen by Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC) as an ideal platform to promote its message of the need to increase regulatory recognition of foreign credentials and licensing of foreign-trained professionals.

Canada’s SROs have been under some criticism recently for occupational regulations that have hampered the labour market integration of Canada’s immigrants.

A report from the Canadian Labour Market and Skills Researcher Network (CLSRN) this month estimates that licensure barriers that prevent immigrants from working in their field of study cost the Canadian economy $2-5.9 billion a year in lost productivity and tax revenue.

Canadian Government Developing a Digital Dollar

Posted on November 8, 2012 by CICS Immigration Team

The Winnipeg Royal Canadian Mint, where the circulation coins of Canada and other countries are produced. The Mint hopes to develop a digital replacement for physical coins in the MintChip

The Royal Canadian Mint, a Crown Corporation responsible for minting Canada’s coins, is developing a digital version of the Canadian dollar that it hopes will make digital transactions as easy as cash-based ones.

The technology being developed is called MintChip, and the Mint is describing it as the ‘evolution of currency’. It relies on public-key cryptography and tamper-proof hardware to create non-reversible digital payments that do not require a connection to a third party payment processor like a bank or credit card network to complete.

The technology is not expected to be unhackable, but to keep risks for small-value digital transactions at manageable levels. The Mint says that due to the absence of transaction fees, the chips would also allow micro-transactions as low as 1 cent ($0.01).

The chip is still in the R&D phase, and it’s not known when, if ever, it will be released for public use.

To push the technology along, the Mint held a MintChip Challenge this year that invited software developers to create prototypes of applications of the technology. The competition ended in September with the winning teams being awarded a total of $52,700 worth of .9999 purity gold at a ceremony on October 25th.

While ambitious and seemingly far-fetched, it appears the Mint is quite far along in developing a replacement for physical banknotes and coins. If successful, the MintChip project would make Canada the first country in the world to have digital government-issued cash, giving its economy a leg up in the race to be a globally competitive centre of innovation.

Immigrating to Canada to Escape American Election Results

Posted on November 6, 2012 by CICS Immigration Team

Resource hubs like northern Alberta's oil sands offer prospective immigrants numerous jobs, which can be the best first step to immigrating to Canada

When Americans look for a country to flee to in the event of their favoured candidate losing the presidential elections, they inevitably look to Canada, their (mostly) English speaking cousin to the North.

For the past three decades, it has been predominantly supporters of Democratic candidates that have made the immigration ultimatum, as Canada has been perceived to align with their party on foreign policy, income redistribution, and cultural issues.

This election season though, the warnings of immigrating to Canada have taken on a more bi-partisan quality, as Canada’s lower government debt levels, stronger economy, tighter control over illegal immigration, more reserved culture, and what many perceive as overall more functional governance, appeals to many conservative-leaning voters.

The growing appeal of Canada to American conservatives also stems from a strong personal dislike that many of them have for Obama, for reasons both ridiculous/bigoted – e.g. conspiracy theories of Obama being a secret Muslim – and ideological.

Whatever the appeal, the number of Americans who actually follow through with their threats and make the move is few. There is no statistically significant spike in immigration levels from the U.S. following presidential elections.

The length and complexity of the Canadian immigration process requires a significant investment of time and a long-term commitment that political passions typically do not motivate.

Immigration Pointers

If you are an American and, having read all of this, still intend to move to Canada, keep these points in mind:

Getting a job in Canada is the most practical way for Americans to become landed immigrants. Having Canadian work experience confers significant advantages for foreign nationals applying for Canadian permanent residency through several immigration programs.

Occupations not traditionally viewed as prestigious, like heavy duty mechanics and welding, can give you the best opportunity of getting a job offer and a work permit in Canada, which will start your process of becoming a Canadian.

Less populated provinces with booming resource-industries, like Alberta, have better job markets and easier paths to immigration than the immigrant magnets of Vancouver, Montreal and Toronto.

As an American, you can take comfort in the fact that you will likely have an easier time immigrating than the nationals of many other countries, as proficiency in one of Canada’s official languages (English and French), is one of the most important criteria in Citizenship and Immigration Canada’s assessment of a permanent residence application.

Largest Canadian Province, Ontario, Announces New Immigration Strategy

Posted on November 5, 2012 by CICS Immigration Team

Arnon Melo, far right, is the type of immigrant Ontario wants more of. A native of Brazil, the entrepreneur founded a logistics company that now employs 10 people (Ontario Ministry of Citizenship and Immigration)

The provincial government of Ontario announced a new immigration strategy on Monday which primarily focuses on attracting more economic class immigrants, meaning those who immigrate through skilled worker and investor programs, to Ontario.

The strategy is shaped by recommendations submitted to the Ontario government by an expert roundtable last month which the government commissioned as a response to years of decreasing immigration to the province.

The final strategy adopted by the provincial government sets as its objectives to increase the province’s total immigration numbers and the proportion of economic immigrants, to boost the economic success of immigrants in order to bring their incomes and employment rates up to that of the Ontario average, and to help the province take greater advantage of the international links immigrants bring.

Some of the specific targets included in the strategy are:

Bringing the proportion of economic immigrants up to 70 percent from the
current 52 percent.
Requesting that the federal government double the province’s Provincial Nominee Program (PNP) quota from its current 1,000, to 5,000 by 2014.
Encouraging employers to develop and expand mentorship, internship and on-the-job training programs.
Increasing the number of immigrants licensed in their field.
Increasing Francophone immigration to five percent.

The strategy sets out to persuade the federal government to change some of the immigration rules that the Ontario provincial government blames for contributing to the province’s underperformance, relative to other provinces, in attracting economic immigrants.

While 52 percent of immigrants to Ontario are economic immigrants, the average rate for other Canadian provinces is 70 percent, a disparity that the Ontario government attributes primarily to the low number of economic immigrants, as a percentage of the total number of economic immigrants to the province, that the federal government permits Ontario to select relative to other, less populated, provinces.

Monday’s announcement will likely put pressure on the federal Department of Citizenship and Immigration to increase the number of immigrants it allows Ontario to select through the Ontario PNP.

Canadian Immigration Department Details its Achievements, Expects Reduction in Wait Times

Posted on November 4, 2012 by CICS Immigration Team

CIC plans to adopt an Expression of Interest (EOI) model for the Federal Skilled Worker Program similar to that in place in New Zealand.

Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC) summarized what it considers the successes of its reforms in recent years in a press release on Friday. CIC said that it expects that by the end of 2013, it will be able to process applications as they are received, and complete their processing within one year.

It said that this will open the door to the adoption of the Expression of Interest (EOI) model for the Federal Skilled Worker Program (FSWP) and possibly other economic immigration streams.

The EOI model requires applicants to submit a simplified preliminary application detailing their qualifications, and allowing provinces and employers to select the most promising of those applicants, who are then invited by CIC to submit a full application that includes documents proving their qualifications.

“The Government’s number one priority remains the economy and job growth. Immigration backlogs are detrimental to our ability to attract the world’s top talent,” said Citizenship and Immigration Minister Jason Kenney in describing the purpose of moving to a “just in time” EOI system of immigration admittance.

“With the decisive actions we’ve taken to tackle the backlog, we will finally be able to select immigrants who better meet the needs of the Canadian labour market. We will aim to process their applications in less than 12 months.”

CIC also detailed the measures it has taken in recent years to address a problem that has long afflicted the FSWP: the large volume of applications that exceed the program’s annual quota and lead to wait times as high as eight years:

In 2008, only accepting FSW applications from individuals qualified in an occupation on the “priority occupations” list.
In 2010, adding a quota to the number of new applications accepted.
In June 2012, eliminating most of the FSW applications on the backlog that were received before February 27, 2008.
In July 2012, temporarily pausing acceptance of new FSW applications, except for applicants with a qualifying job offer and those applying under the PhD stream.

These measures, said CIC, have reduced the FSWP backlog from 640,000 people in 2008 to 100,000 today.

CIC plans to re-start the FSWP in 2013, and admit 55,300 people over the year, approximately the same as the 55,000–57,000 quota for the program in 2012. It said that new rules for a revamped FSWP will be published later this year.

Ontario Judge Freezes Iran’s Canadian Embassy and Other Assets

Posted on November 1, 2012 by CICS Immigration Team

The building on 245 Metcalfe St, Ottawa that housed the former Iranian embassy in Canada is one of three buildings frozen by an Ontario court (Google Maps)

A judge in Ontario has frozen three properties found to belong to Iran, including the building that housed Iran’s former embassy in Ottawa and Iran’s former cultural centre in Toronto, according to a story by the National Post:

Three properties were frozen, ensuring they are not sold or transferred, until court can decide whether they should be forfeited to the victim’s family to help satisfy the U.S. court award. The property is owned by the government of Iran or by an “alter ego” used “as a front” for Iran, court heard.

The injunction was requested by the family of Marla Bennett, an American who was killed in a terrorist attack at the Hebrew University in Israel while she was a student there in 2002, and who won a lawsuit in the U.S. against the Iranian government in 2007.

In the 2007 ruling, a U.S. court found that the Iranian government bore responsibility for the attack that killed Ms. Bennett because of support it has provided to Hamas, the group which carried out the attack, and ordered it to pay the plaintiffs nearly $13 million US. The lawyers representing the family have had difficulty collecting the money though due to the lack of seizable Iranian assets in the U.S., which has led to them turning their attention to Iranian assets in Canada and Canadian courts to enforce the U.S. judgement.

The presiding judge in the Canadian case, Justice Beth Allen, said that the plaintiffs made a convincing enough case at first glance to warrant a temporary injunction. No one appeared for Iran at the proceedings as is typical of the initial proceedings of lawsuits in the U.S. against the Iranian government.

Justice for Victims of Terrorism Act

Justice Allen cited the Justice for Victims of Terrorism Act, legislation recently passed by the Harper government, as providing support for the case that Canadian courts could enforce the U.S. court ruling on Iran.

The legislation designates countries on a Canadian list of states that the Foreign Affairs department deems to have “supported terrorism since 1985” as not enjoying the immunity from lawsuits granted by Canada’s State Immunity Act. Iran and Syria are the only countries in the world on the list.

The Justice for Victims of Terrorism Act has been criticized by the Canadian Civil Liberties Association (CCLA) for the potential it has to undermine the impartiality of the Canadian justice system by politicizing access to justice.

The CCLA has also expressed concern that by granting selective immunity to states, the legislation denies due process and equality before the law for victims of terrorist acts perpetrated by states not on the federal government’s list of states that have supported terrorism.