New rules make it ‘nearly impossible’ for employers to keep foreign graduates on staff

The Liberal government will likely look at this issue as part of reviewing the overall Express Entry point system, along additional points for family siblings and restoration of pre-Permanent Resident time credit:

When Jorge Amigo chose to come to Canada for university, he hadn’t expected to want to spend his life here.

“My decision to come here as a student had nothing to do with immigration,” says Mr. Amigo, 33, who’s from Mexico City. “But after living here for a few months, I realized I loved this place and I wanted to stay.”

Before Ottawa’s points-based Express Entry system was introduced on Jan. 1, international students with a year of Canadian skilled work experience were almost guaranteed to stay by getting permanent residency under the Canadian Experience Class (CEC). But with the change, Mr. Amigo – who has bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of British Columbia, an impressive post-graduate résumé and a job with a booming Vancouver-based tech company – fears he may have to leave when his work permit expires in June.

With the new system, it’s nearly impossible for most international student graduates such as Mr. Amigo to get permanent residency under Express Entry – unless their employers can prove that no Canadians can do the job, immigration lawyers say.

“Tens of thousands of students are now heartbroken, stressed and don’t know what to do with their lives because they were misled by the government,” says Vancouver immigration lawyer Zool Suleman. “Employers are looking to lose a group of well-educated students who would be a benefit to the labour market.”

The online system, intended to eliminate a massive backlog of immigration applications from outside of Canada, now makes students compete in a points-based system with everyone else trying to get permanent residency.

“They shouldn’t have included [the CEC] in the Express Entry system because there never was a backlog with it – they never even met their quotas,” says Matthew Jeffrey, an immigration lawyer in Toronto. “These are the ideal immigrants because they’re educated in Canada and they have skilled work experience in Canada and they usually still have that job – they hit the ground running.”

Under Express Entry, applicants get points for education, age, work experience and their skills in English and French. If an applicant’s points are over the minimum score set by the government, they’re invited in.

“The problem for people who came in as students is they can’t rank very highly in the pool,” Mr. Jeffery says, a Toronto immigration lawyer. “They’re young and they only have a year or two of work experience, so their score from the beginning is going to be low.”

Source: New rules make it ‘nearly impossible’ for employers to keep foreign graduates on staff – The Globe and Mail