Author Archives: CICS Immigration Team

Immigrating to Canada to Escape American Election Results

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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

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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

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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

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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.

Canada to Keep Immigration Level at 250,000 in 2013

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International students in Vancouver, Canada. CIC is seeking to increase the percentage of immigrants admitted under the Canadian Experience Class (CEC), which allows temporary foreign workers and international students in Canada to apply for permanent residence if they have Canadian work experience (CICS News)

Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC) announced today that it will keep immigration levels at 240,000-265,000 in 2013, for the seventh straight year. The maintenance of immigration numbers from previous years amidst a growing Canadian population means Canada will have a lower immigration rate as a percentage of its population, and rebuff calls by several prominent organizations to increase immigration levels to one percent of Canada’s population.

Citizenship and Immigration Minister Jason Kenney said earlier this year that Canada would hold off on increasing immigration levels until the country does a better job of bringing immigrant employment and income rates up to the Canadian average, and until public sentiment, which in some recent opinion polls weighs against increases in immigration levels, supports higher levels.

CIC said that it also intends to increase the number of new permanent residents admitted through the Canadian Experience Class (CEC) program from 6,000 in 2011 to 10,000 in 2013.

The Canadian Experience Class was created in 2008 to allow individuals residing in Canada on temporary resident visas to transition to permanent residence. Foreign temporary workers with at least two years of Canadian work experience, and foreign graduates of Canadian post-secondary institutions with at least one year of Canadian work experience are eligible to immigrate under the program, which CIC says admits the kind of immigrants that would be more likely to integrate well into the Canadian labour market.

Protectionist Workplace Regulations Marginalizing Canadian Immigrants -Vancouver Sun

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A new CLSRN study finds that occupational licensing requirements are preventing many Canadian immigrants from working in their field of study

An article in Monday’s Vancouver Sun blames trade and professional associations for hampering the economic integration of Canadian immigrants.

The story, by columnist Don Cayo, cites a new report by Canadian researchers that finds that occupational licensing is preventing immigrants to Canada from working in their field of study, at a cost of $2-5.9 billion a year to the country’s economy.

The Canadian Labour Market and Skills Researcher Network (CLSRN) report notes that a full 20 percent of workers in the Canadian labour market now work in an occupation that requires a license, and that these licenses create significant barriers to entry that take up to a decade for a new immigrant to overcome.

Drawing from several studies authored by CLSRN researchers, the report finds that the average Canadian immigrant experiences an immediate drop in the skill level of their occupation upon arriving in Canada, and that even after four years, only 20 percent of women and 25 percent of men are working in their pre-immigration occupation.

Commenting on the report’s findings, Cayo says the mismatch between immigrants’ work experience and their post-immigration occupation is due to self-regulating trade and professional associations imposing licensing requirements in order to limit competition to their members:

Self-serving self-regulators are capable of a lot of sanctimonious bumph — and of greatly complicating accreditation procedures — to minimize the competition and protect their comfortable sinecures. Simply put, the old boys are way too prone to put down the “new kids on the block.”

He argues that unless self-regulating labour associations reduce regulatory barriers to entry in their fields, the government should repeal their regulatory powers.

Occupational licensing and the immigrant income gap

The income gap between recent immigrants and native-born Canadians has grown from 20 percent in 1970 to 40 percent in 2011, despite the proportion of recent immigrants with a university degree increasing from 10 percent in 1980 to over 54 percent in 2007 – or more than double that of native-born Canadians.

One possible explanation is the shift to an immigration selection criteria that favours foreign professionals who are trained for occupations that are regulated in Canada, like teachers, nurses, doctors, lawyers, engineers and veterinarians.

Canadian Immigration Department Enacts New Marriage Sponsorship Rules

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Under rules announced today, sponsored spouses will receive conditional permanent residence upon arriving in Canada and be required to live with their spouse or partner for two years to receive full permanent residence

Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC) introduced new spousal immigration sponsorship regulations today to reduce the incidence of marriage fraud. The new rules require sponsored spouses who have no children with their sponsor to be in a live-in relationship with their spouse for two years to get full permanent residence status.

Under rules in place until today’s announcement, a sponsored spouse received permanent residence on the day they arrived in Canada, and subsequently could leave their spouse and retain their residency status in Canada.

Calls to reform immigration sponsorship rules have increased as several high-profile cases, like those of Lainie Towell and Heinz Munz, have brought the issue of foreign spouses leaving their Canadian husbands and wives soon after arriving in Canada to the public’s attention.

The new rules will not apply to sponsored spouses who have a child with their sponsor on the date of their spousal sponsorship application submission. The regulation also includes an exemption for sponsored spouses or partners who suffer abuse or neglect from their Canadian partner or someone related to their partner.

Those not exempt from the regulation must be in a relationship with their sponsoring spouse or partner for two years from the date that they receive their permanent residency or have their status in Canada revoked.

“I have consulted widely with Canadians, and especially with victims of marriage fraud, who have told me clearly that we must take action to stop this abuse of our immigration system,” said Citizenship and Immigration Minister Jason Kenney in announcing the new rules.

“Sometimes the sponsor in Canada is being duped and sometimes it’s a commercial transaction. Implementing a two-year conditional permanent residence period will help deter marriage fraud, prevent the callous victimization of innocent Canadians and help us put an end to these scams.”

Until today’s announcement, Canada was one of the few countries that did not have an initial conditional permanent residence period for foreign nationals sponsored for immigration by a spouse, and consequently, CIC says was considered a “soft target” by criminal organizations seeking to exploit Canadian immigration rules.

Several large-scale marriage scams have been uncovered in recent years, including the case of over 600 people involved in trading marriage sponsorships for money between 2007 and 2009.

Census Shows Growing Multi-Lingual-ism of Canada, in Line With Immigration Trends

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Granville St in Vancouver. Thirty-one percent of Vancouver's population now speaks a language other than English or French at home, according to the latest census data (CICS News)

Twenty percent of the Canadian population now speaks a language other than French or English at home, according to the latest census information released by Statistics Canada.

The statistics point to immigration’s transformational effect on Canadian demography and culture, as hundreds of thousands of people from primarily non-English and French speaking countries settle in Canada each year.

The census shows a majority – 58.0% – of the Canadian population speaking only English at home, and 18.2% speaking only French.

According to the census, the fastest growing non-English-or-French languages in Canada between 2006 and 2011 were:

  • Tagalog, the national language of the Philippines (+64%)
  • Mandarin, the official language of China (+50%)
  • Arabic, spoken in the Middle East and North Africa (+47%)
  • Hindi, the official language of India (+44%)
  • Creole languages, spoken primarily in the Caribbean islands (+42%)
  • Bengali, a common language in India (+40%)
  • Persian, the official language of Iran (+33%)
  • Spanish, the official language of Spain and most of Latin America (+32%)

The list closely mirrors immigration trends, with the Philippines, India and China as the largest sources of immigrants to Canada:

  • Philippines (13%)
  • India (10.8%)
  • People’s Republic of China (10.8%)
  • United Kingdom (3.4%)
  • United States of America (3.3%)
  • France (2.5%)
  • Iran (2.4%)
  • United Arab Emirates (2.4%)
  • Morocco (2.1%)
  • Republic of Korea (2%)

Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC)

Among metropolitan areas, the highest concentration of non-English and French language speakers was found in Toronto, with 32.2% speaking another language at home. The most commonly spoken immigrant languages in Toronto were found to be Cantonese, Punjabi, Chinese n.o.s., Urdu and Tamil.

Vancouver had the next highest concentration of immigrant language speakers, at 31%. Among immigrant language speakers, Punjabi was the most common language spoken, at 17.7%, followed by Cantonese (16.0%), Chinese n.o.s. (12.2%), Mandarin (11.8%) and Tagalog (6.7%).

Montréal had a significantly lower proportion of immigrant language speakers than Toronto and Vancouver, at 16.5% of its population.

Arabic, at 17.2%, followed by Spanish (15.2%), Italian (8.1%), Chinese n.o.s. (5.7%) and a Creole language (5.4%) were the most common immigrant languages reported to be spoken in the city.

Canadian Non-Partisan Think Tank Finds Oil Sands Greatly Benefit Country’s Economy

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A technician at Syncrude, the largest producer of crude oil derived from the Athabasca oil sands (Syncrude Canada Ltd.)

The Conference Board of Canada (CBoC), the largest non-partisan think tank in Canada, has published a study today showing that development of northern Alberta’s Athabasca oil sands will create over 3.2 million person-years of employment in Canada over the next 25 years, a third of them in provinces other than Alberta.

The CBoC report projects $364 billion in investment will be made into developing Canada’s oil sands deposits over the next 25 years, which will create 880,000 person-years of employment in projects directly related to oil sands development and 1.45 million in production of goods/services linked to the investment through the supply-chain.

The combined 2.3 million person-years of employment are projected by the study to earn $172 billion in income, which will generate another 880,000 person-years of employment through the wealth effect of the employees spending their income.

The report estimates that over 90 percent of the direct-effects employment, 70 percent of the supply chain employment, and 59 percent of the wealth effect employment will be generated in Alberta, where the investment activity will occur.

Other Canadian regions will benefit in the order of Ontario, deriving the largest benefit, then BC, Quebec, the Prairies, and Atlantic Canada, which will see the smallest gain in oil-sands-investment-related employment.

The CBoC report only studied the projected effects of the oil sands investment, and not the oil production itself, which it estimates will be even larger than the investment activity.

The report projects Canadian oil exports will increase by 2.9 million barrels of oil per day (mmbd), from 2011 levels, to 4 mmbd of oil by 2035, increasing direct employment in the oil and gas industry to 175,000.

Continued immigration into Alberta

The employment effects predicted by the CBoC study suggest that high-levels of inter-provincial and international immigration into Alberta will continue for the forseeable future.

Alberta led Canadian provinces last year with a population growth rate of 2.5 percent, thanks to having the highest per capita GDP and, alongside Saskatchewan, the lowest unemployment rate in Canada.

Canada Ranks 17th in ‘Ease of Doing Business’, Shines in ‘Starting a Business’ Category

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Canada's largest port, the Port of Vancouver. Canada placed 17th in the World Bank's Doing Business report that ranks countries by general ease of doing business.

Canada ranks as the 17th easiest place in the world to do business in a report released on Tuesday by the World Bank. The 2013 edition of the Doing Business report rates 185 countries according to 11 sets of indicators that quantify the ease of complying with regulations and the protection of property ownership rights.

Canada’s overall ranking was weighed down by the low scores it received in the ‘Dealing with construction permits’ (69), ‘Getting electricity’ (152), and ‘Enforcing contracts’ (62) categories. It ranked near the top of the rankings in the ‘Starting a business’ category, at third, with a business requiring one procedure and five days to start on average in the country.

Last month, Canada placed fifth in another international economic freedom index, the Fraser Institute’s annual Economic Freedom of the World report. In that ranking, Canada placed well ahead of its southern neighbour, which came in 18th.

The situation is reversed in the World Bank report, with the US, at 4th in the world, ranking 13 places ahead of Canada -exactly the same number of places that Canada was ahead of the US by in September’s report.

Relevance

The accuracy of economic freedom indices has been questioned by some groups, due to the arbitrary weighting of the indicators used to formulate the final score a country receives, and the non-recognition of the ease of participating in the un-regulated, informal economy – an area where less developed countries have an advantage due to their less developed regulatory enforcement mechanisms – as a factor in economic freedom in all of the major indices.

Nevertheless, a good showing in an economic freedom index is highly sought after due to the perception it gives of a country being open for business and having a strong rule of law.

Canada’s placing in the indices should improve considerably in coming years due to the comprehensive Red Tape Reduction Action Plan, a major overhaul of the regulatory framework, announced this month, which will implement the recommendations of the federal government’s year-long Red Tape Reduction Commission.