Ottawa announces immigration rule changes that will give highly paid foreign workers an edge

Sensible change:

Highly paid foreign nationals working in Canada – including doctors, engineers and programmers – will now have an advantage when applying for permanent residence.

Immigration Minister Lena Metlege Diab announced changes to immigration rules Friday that will see applicants to the Express Entry system receive additional points if they have worked for at least a year in a high-wage job in Canada or have a high-paid job offer.

The extra points will increase the chances of skilled foreign nationals, such as academics and people working in high tech, getting an invitation from the Immigration Department to apply for permanent residence.

The move follows calls in recent years from economists to focus immigration on the highly skilled workers that Canada needs to fuel growth and plug labour gaps, rather than large numbers of unskilled workers.

Benjamin Tal, deputy chief economist at CIBC World Markets, said Friday he agrees that the focus for immigration “should be on high-skilled individuals.”

“But it also needs to focus on skilled labour such as trades where Canada has a chronic shortage,” he said in an e-mail. “If one of the goals of housing policy is to reduce the cost of building, such a move will be in the right direction toward improving housing affordability.”

A high-wage occupation is defined by the Immigration Department as a job where the median wage is at least 1.3 times the national median wage for all workers, which is currently about $57,000….

Source: Ottawa announces immigration rule changes that will give highly paid foreign workers an edge