Ottawa looks to ease international students’ path to permanent residency

2016/03/16 Leave a comment

Appears that the government has heard these entreaties, as well as believing in the policy merits of encouraging a pathway to permanent residency and citizenship for students, with changes to Express Entry expected:

The Liberal government is moving to make it easier for international students to become permanent residents once they have graduated from Canadian postsecondary institutions.

Immigration Minister John McCallum said he intends to launch federal-provincial talks to reform the current Express Entry program, a computerized system that serves as a matchmaking service between employers and foreign skilled workers. Thousands of international students have been rejected for permanent residency because the program favours prospective skilled workers from abroad.

“We must do more to attract students to this country as permanent residents,” Mr. McCallum told reporters after meeting with his provincial and territorial counterparts Monday. “International students have been shortchanged by the Express Entry system. They are the cream of the crop in terms of potential future Canadians and so I certainly would like to work with my provincial and territorial colleagues to improve that.”

Mr. McCallum said international students are ideal immigrants and should be recruited by Canada.

“I believe international students are among the most fertile source of new immigrants for Canada. By definition, they are educated. They speak English or French,” said the minister.

“They know something about the country, so they should be first on our list of people who we court to come to Canada,” he minister.

International students have been uncertain about whether they will be able to stay in Canada after they finish their studies since the former Conservative government introduced the Express Entry system on Jan. 1, 2015. Prior to that, they had a clear path to permanent residency.

To be able to apply for permanent residence under Express Entry, however, graduates have to reach a certain number of points, with levels changing from month to month. Those with the highest points in any given month are more likely to be successful.

Evan Green, a Toronto immigration lawyer who has helped international students apply for permanent residence, was cautious about the promise to adjust how applications are processed.

The government is projecting fewer economic applicants overall, and so international students may face more competition for the available spots.

“The target for 2015 was 181,300 in the economic class and this year it’s 160,600,” he said.

Still, a few simple adjustments could make it easier for international students to settle in Canada, he said. Giving graduates specific points for education and work experience in this country would be a start. That’s how the prior system worked.

“You had people who paid for their own education, had Canadian work experience, they’re pretty good immigrants,” he said. “They could adjust it so that work experience on your postgrad work permit could be worth more.”

Making the system easier to navigate is crucial to Canada’s economy and its universities, said Paul Davidson, the president of Universities Canada. International students contribute in excess of $10-billion in GDP to the economy, more than wheat and more than softwood lumber, he said.

“It’s a global competition,” he said. “Being able to offer a commitment that students can stay here after they graduate is part of the pitch Canadian universities make to attract top talent.”

Source: Ottawa looks to ease international students’ path to permanent residency – The Globe and Mail

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Changing Immigrant Characteristics and Entry Earnings: StatCan Study

2016/02/18 Leave a comment

Key takeaway of this study: Canadian work experience makes the largest difference in short-term (less than 2 years) economic outcomes, and provides an evidence-base for policy changes that reward it (e.g., Express Entry points). In the longer-term, education and age are more significant (View):

Immigration selection policies changed significantly during the 1990s and 2000s, at least in part to improve immigrant entry earnings. After the decline in both relative (to the Canadian-born) and absolute entry earnings during the 1980s and early 1990s, there was a strong desire to improve the economic outcomes of immigrants shortly after their landing. Changes in selection policies and other factors altered immigrants’ characteristics across a number of dimensions, including demographics, source region, work experience and geographic distributions. This paper examines whether immigrants’ earnings immediately after their landing improved as a result of these changes and, if so, which characteristics contributed the most to this improvement.

Among all new immigrants, abstracting from economic cyclical variation, entry earnings—defined as earnings in the first two full years after landing—remained more or less constant throughout the 1990s and 2000s. The situation was very similar for principal applicants (PAs) in the economic class. During the 1990s, rising educational attainment at landing and the increasing share of immigrants in the economic class increased entry earnings. During the 2000s, a much more complex period in terms of immigrant selection, the factors that positively influenced immigrant entry earnings included changing distribution by immigration class, notably the rise of the Provincial Nominee Program (PNP); changing source region; and, for immigrant women, rising educational attainment at landing. These factors were offset by less favourable economic conditions in destination cities and regions in the late 2000s.

However, one factor dominated all others: the rise in the share of new immigrants who had Canadian work experience, often in high-paying jobs, prior to obtaining permanent residency. Changes in this factor tended to increase entry earnings during the 2000s far more than any other variable studied. The increase in pre-landing Canadian work experience accounted for most of the positive effect of the rise of the PNP on entry earnings during the 2000s, since the increase in work experience was heavily concentrated among provincial nominees. Furthermore, differences in pre-landing Canadian work experience between provincial nominees (with more Canadian work experience) and skilled workers (SWs) (with less) accounted for virtually all of the entry earnings advantage that the provincial nominees held over the SWs during the 2000s. While other factors, such as differences in geographic distribution (more settled in the West), educational attainment at landing, unemployment in the destination regions and cities, and source region, contributed, either in a small positive or negative manner, to the entry earnings differences between provincial nominees and SWs, their contribution paled in comparison with the pre-landing Canadian work experience factor. Once adjusted for differences in pre-landing Canadian work experience, entry earnings were virtually identical between provincial nominees and SWs. These conclusions were found for all new immigrants, as well as for PAs in the economic class, and were evident for both men and women.

It is likely that the pre-landing Canadian work experience variable used here captures at least three effects. First is the effect of Canadian work experience on earnings early in immigrants’ working life after landing. Employers appear to be more willing to remunerate such experience relative to foreign work experience. Second, this variable may also reflect a selection effect. When immigrants are selected from the pool of temporary foreign workers, they come with information regarding how well they performed in their jobs in Canada. If an employer seeks to change the status of temporary foreign workers to a permanent one, it is likely because they have done well in their jobs. Hence, much of the effect on entry earnings could be because of this selection process. Third, during the 2000s, many of the workers on temporary visas who attained permanent status worked in high-paying jobs.

Source: Changing Immigrant Characteristics and Entry Earnings

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Express entry, foreign worker reforms attract ‘fewer’ skilled workers: chamber report

2016/01/16 Leave a comment

Express Entry Draws 2015.001Another item on Minister McCallum’s to do (or at least consider) list, passage below on Express Entry (the above chart shows the 23 rounds in 2015, and how the program has settled at around 1,500 invitations per draw, with a minimum score of about 40 percent of the total possible 1,200 points):

“The concept of attracting ‘the best and the brightest’ is missing in action,” says the new report, “as the competitive model of Express Entry is currently undermined by the protectionist policy embodied in the labour market impact assessment tool.”

As CBC reported in September, businesses say the labour market impact assessment (LMIA) — a new requirement borrowed from the newly reformed Temporary Foreign Worker Program — is the biggest flaw with Express Entry.

Under Canada’s new immigration system, highly-skilled foreign workers not only have to line up a job before applying to come to Canada but their job offer has to be backed by what the government calls a positive LMIA. That assessment is a document all employers now need to hire a foreign worker over a Canadian one.

The chamber calls the introduction of this new requirement a “misstep” that has made it “extremely challenging” for businesses to attract highly-skilled workers such as video game developers, top-flight researchers and workers in the trades.

Chamber calls for ‘sober, thoughtful review’

The 32-page report titled “Immigration for a Competitive Canada: Why Highly Skilled International Talent Is at Risk” lays out what Canadian businesses see as “missteps” with the immigration changes and offers 20 recommendations.

The recommendations include:

  • Removing the new requirement of a labour market impact assessment from the Express Entry system.

  • Tweak the points system under Express Entry to benefit high skilled workers applying under the International Mobility Program.

  • Reduce processing times for study permits and visas.

Source: Express entry, foreign worker reforms attract ‘fewer’ skilled workers: chamber report – Politics – CBC News

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

2015/12/15 1 Comment

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

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Temporary foreign workers get first dibs under express entry

2015/09/30 Leave a comment

More teething pains or more substantive problems? Early results or signalling a trend?

Jason Kenney, who was responsible for the Harper government’s transformation of Canada’s immigration system during his time as immigration minister, on Friday touted express entry as “a system that’s fast, that connects people to the labour market so they can realize their dreams and fulfil their potential upon arrival in Canada.”

“New economic immigrants are arriving in Canada in months rather than years,” Kenney said during a news conference in Vancouver.

“A growing percentage have jobs lined up before they get to Canada rather than being stuck in survival jobs for years following their arrival.”

While that may be the goal, express entry has opened the door to very few new economic immigrants. To date, it has favoured a large number of temporary foreign workers and other foreign nationals already in the country.

Over 85 per cent of the foreign nationals who were selected for admission under express entry in the first six months of the year — 11,047 out of 12,304 — were already in Canada, according to a report published by the Department of Citizenship and Immigration in July.

The report shows that three per cent were living in India, followed by two per cent in the U.S. and one per cent in the Philippines. Even smaller percentages resided in other countries.

As of July 6, Canada had issued 844 visas to foreign nationals and their dependents resulting in only 411 admissions being fast tracked for permanency residency.

“Implementing the express entry system was a significant undertaking and we continue to monitor it closely,” the government report said, cautioning it is only “a snapshot” intended to capture “one moment in time.”

While immigration officials are working tirelessly to iron the kinks out of the system, the report said Canada will meet its immigration quota not through express entry but by drawing from a backlog of applications submitted under the old system.

The majority of new economic immigrants to Canada will not be drawn using the new system until it’s in full flight in 2017.

‘Unusable’ for businesses

Businesses say the system’s biggest flaw is a new requirement borrowed from the newly reformed temporary foreign worker program, which Kenney and Chris Alexander announced last year following a series of stories published by CBC’s Go Public team alleging abuse of the program.

Under express entry, it isn’t enough that economic immigrants have to line up a job before applying to come to Canada — that offer must also be backed by a positive labour market impact assessment. That assessment, or LMIA, is a document all employers now need to hire a foreign worker over a Canadian one.

This is a new requirement under an economic stream that sees upwards of 250,000 new permanent residents admitted each year.

“It’s made it unusable for many employers that we hear from and for small and medium businesses,” said Sarah Anson-Cartwright, the director of skills policy at the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, the largest business association in the country representing some 200,000 employers

Members of the Chamber, she said, are disillusioned with a process that has become too “onerous.” Employers are complaining that their assessment forms are being rejected due to inadvertent omissions or typos.

Source: Temporary foreign workers get first dibs under express entry – Politics – CBC News

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An Early Look at Express Entry Candidate Selection

2015/08/24 Leave a comment

__An_Early_Look_at_Express_Entry_Candidate_SelectionGood summary of experience to date with Express Entry by the Conference Board:

A new report by Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC) provides a mid-year update on Express Entry, CIC’s new, two-step application management system.1 Launched on January 1, 2015, Express Entry seeks to be more responsive to Canada’s economic needs while processing immigration applications more efficiently.2 In step one, candidates complete online profiles and are awarded up to 1,200 points based on various criteria. In step two, CIC draws the highest scorers from the pool of candidates, who then become eligible to submit applications for permanent residence in Canada.

As of July 6, 2015, 112,701 Express Entry profiles had been submitted. Of these profiles, 48,723 candidates (43 per cent) were found ineligible since they did not meet Express Entry criteria. Of the remainder, 12,928 received invitations to apply for permanent resident status (in eleven draws which took place January 1–July 6: See Table 1). Among the invited candidates, 70 per cent scored above 600 points, meaning that the majority either obtained a job offer backed by a Labour Market Impact Assessment (LMIA),3 or a Provincial Nomination Program (PNP) certificate.4 Scoring over 600 points was a prerequisite to receiving an invitation to apply in Express Entry’s first four draws. Since then, point requirements have declined, though never below 453 points.

The overwhelming majority of invited candidates resided in Canada at the time of their Express Entry application (85.5 per cent), followed by India (3.2 per cent), and the United States (1.8 per cent). The top five source countries of invited candidates were India (20.8 per cent), the Philippines (19.4 per cent), the United Kingdom (7.4 per cent), Ireland (5.3 per cent), and China (4.1 per cent).

An Early Look at Express Entry Candidate Selection.

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Only 1 in 10 candidates invited to immigrate under Ottawa’s new Express Entry system

2015/08/08 Leave a comment

Only_1_in_10_candidates_invited_to_immigrate_under_Ottawa’s_new_Express_Entry_system___Toronto_StarTeething pains or more substantial issues?

More than 112,700 people applied for permanent residency in Canada under a highly touted new system Ottawa introduced in January — but only one in 10 succeeded in getting an actual invitation to come.

Despite a promise that Express Entry would allow expeditious processing within six months, only 844 permanent resident visas were issued, including both the principal applicant and family members, and 411 people had arrived in Canada as of July 6, according to the program’s six-month review.

More than 85 per cent of the 12,017 candidates selected from the pool were already in Canada on temporary permits at the time of the application. The top five source countries included India, the Philippines, the United Kingdom, Ireland and China.

“It is remarkable that only 844 visas have been issued for a program which has invited over 12,000 people to apply. Within the 844, only 411 have actually used their visas and been admitted to Canada as permanent residents,” said Toronto immigration lawyer Shoshana Green.

“Is 844 visas considered a successful program? With over 85 per cent of the invitations being made for applicants currently residing in Canada, is the world really interested in Canada anymore?”

…In the first six months of the program, 11 rounds of invitations were held, with the cutoff scores ranging from a low of 453 to a high of 886. Some 70 per cent of people receiving an invitation had a score above 600 points, meaning the majority would be coming with an approved job offer.

Critics have argued that meeting the selection cutoff score and being invited does not necessarily mean the best candidates are chosen, as the new system favours those who have obtained the LMIA.

For instance, someone with a total score of 649 can actually be a weaker candidate than someone with 599 points who earned the score strictly from his or her personal attributes — rather than with the boost of 600 bonus points that comes from an approved job opportunity.

According to Citizenship and Immigration Canada’s six-month review, 112,701 candidate profiles were created as of July 6. Some 48,723 were deemed ineligible, and 6,441 were withdrawn.

Among the 41,218 active candidates remaining in the pool, more than half, or 27,000 people, had a score between 300 and 399. Only 355 had a score over 600; 51 had a score above 1,000.

Only 1 in 10 candidates invited to immigrate under Ottawa’s new Express Entry system | Toronto Star.

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ICYMI: Government changes course, promises to help CFL quarterback Henry Burris obtain citizenship

2015/04/14 Leave a comment

Another reminder of the complexities of life running against more clear-cut program design:

But the 39-year-old Spiro, Okla., native’s citizenship application was rejected under Ottawa’s recently overhauled immigration policy.

The Express Entry program classified his CFL career as “part-time work” because the season lasts only six months, from June to November.

“Our job doesn’t qualify as a full-time occupation since it’s not year-round,” Burris said. “But trust me, due to the fact of what we do on and off the fields, it’s more than just a full-time job.”

In a statement sent to CTV News Sunday, Kevin Menard — spokesperson for Citizenship and Immigration Minister Chris Alexander — said the government would “work with” Burris to help him obtain citizenship.

“Mr. Burris has shown a great commitment to Canada over many years, and his community work through his foundation is an example for Canadian youth and all Canadians,” Menard said. “We will work with the Ottawa RedBlacks and Mr. Burris to ensure he can remain in Canada.”

Government changes course, promises to help CFL quarterback Henry Burris obtain citizenship | CTV News.

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Slow start for Express Entry but new immigration system to pick up – Minister

2015/04/13 Leave a comment

Still early days so we should see the ramp up Alexander refers to:

Mr. Alexander said he doesn’t expect the new system to significantly alter the mix of Canada’s immigration source countries. India, China and the Philippines remain the largest sources for applications.

“We still see strong interest and immigration flows from Asia … but we also see some new markets responding to the prospects of a faster system,” Mr. Alexander said. “I know in France there’s a lot of interest in Canadian immigration and a lot of interest in Express Entry.”

In one round of selections, the top countries of residence were Canada (foreign applicants who are already in the country), the United States, India and England, according to Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC).

… “That is truly remarkable,” Mr. Alexander said. Under the old system, would-be immigrants could wait up to eight years to have their applications assessed, since it was run on a first-come, first-served basis. Now, the top candidates go to the front of the line right away, he said.

It’s a competitive system, but fair, he added.

Slow start for Express Entry but new immigration system to pick up – The Globe and Mail.

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Ottawa’s new Express Entry immigration system slow off the mark

2015/04/07 Leave a comment

Seems like normal process of introducing a new approach. We need to see full-year and likely two-year data to judge operational success (economic and social outcomes will take longer):

So far, slightly more than 6,850 prospective immigrants have been invited to apply for permanent residency under Express Entry. It will not be until 2017, two years after its launch, that a majority of immigrants are processed through the new system, Citizenship and Immigration Canada said. The shift to the new economic immigration system was announced in 2012 and has been in place since Jan. 1.

In its 2015 immigration levels plan, the Citizenship and Immigration ministry pledged to accept 260,000 to 285,000 new permanent residents, about two-thirds of them economic migrants. To meet that target, the government needs to admit about 22,500 immigrants a month, about 10 times the number that are admitted through Express Entry at present. Most new immigrants this year will have to be selected through the old system, which was criticized because it was slow and operated on first-come, first-served basis.

“CIC is in a period of transition with recent implementation of Express Entry that will span approximately two years,” said Johanne Nadeau, a Citizenship and Immigration Canada spokeswoman.

A majority of economic immigrants arriving in 2015 will be drawn from the pool of people who applied to enter Canada in the years before Express Entry was introduced, Ms. Nadeau said. It is not clear exactly how large a portion of overall immigration will come from Express Entry candidates, or whether the pace at which invitations are issued will increase.

CIC would not say whether it has annual targets or expectations for Express Entry admissions at this point. The number of new permanent residents coming through the program is expected to grow in 2016 to about half of all admissions. By 2017, most, if not all economic admissions should be through Express Entry, Ms. Nadeau said.

Ottawa’s new Express Entry immigration system slow off the mark – The Globe and Mail.

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