Ottawa yet to launch program announced last year that would grant permanent residency to low-wage workers

2025/08/12 Leave a comment

Second thoughts?

More than a year after announcing a new immigration stream that would have granted permanent residency to low-wage workers already in Canada, the federal government has yet to move ahead on formally launching the program – suggesting that Ottawa could be backing away from the plan altogether. 

The plan targeting low-wage workers was informally announced in April 2024, through the Canada Gazette. Consultations were set to begin last year on amending immigration laws to admit a “new permanent economic class of workers in TEER 4 and TEER 5 jobs.” 

But the program was not included in July’s version of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada’s forward regulatory plan, which details coming changes to federal immigration rules and programs over the next three years. 

Training, Education, Experience and Responsibilities, or TEER, is a job categorization system used by the government for immigration purposes. TEER 4 and TEER 5 workers usually have either a high-school diploma or no formal education at all, and examples of their occupations include delivery service drivers, caregivers, food production and retail workers. 

IRCC spokesperson Sofica Lukianenko said in a late July e-mail to The Globe and Mail that the department will “continue to examine the role of immigration in meeting labour market needs at TEER 4 and 5 occupations.” …

Scrapping an immigration program that would grant PR to low-wage workers would be a wise move if the government’s larger goal is to increase gross domestic product per capita through prioritizing higher-skilled immigrants, argues Mikal Skuterud, a professor of labour economics at the University of Waterloo. 

Prof. Skuterud was highly critical of the TEER 4 and TEER 5 pathway plan when it was announced last year, telling The Globe at the time that it would suppress wages and undermine public support for immigration. He said Ottawa intended to launch the program to hedge against the growing problem of visa overstayers, as offering foreign workers currently in Canada a direct path to PR en masse would reduce both temporary resident and undocumented populations. …

Source: Ottawa yet to launch program announced last year that would grant permanent residency to low-wage workers

Filed under Immigration Tagged with , ,

Germany eases path to permanent residency for migrants

2022/07/08 Leave a comment

Of note, another nail in the coffin of the guest worker approach:

Tens of thousands of migrants, who have been living in Germany for years without long-lasting permission to remain in the country, will be eligible for permanent residency after the government approved a new migration bill Wednesday.

The new regulation, endorsed by the Cabinet, applies to about 136,000 people who have lived in Germany for at least five years by Jan. 1, 2022.

Those who qualify can first apply for a one-year residency status and subsequently apply for permanent residency in Germany. They must earn enough money to make an independent living in the country, speak German and prove that they are “well integrated” into society.

Those under the age of 27 can already apply for a path to permanent residency in Germany after having lived in the country for three years.

“We want people who are well integrated to have good opportunities in our country,” Interior Minister Nancy Faeser told reporters. “In this way, we also put an end to bureaucracy and uncertainty for people who have already become part of our society.”

The new migration regulation will also make it easier for asylum-seekers to learn German — so far only those with a realistic chance of receiving asylum in the country were eligible for language classes — with all asylum applicants getting the chance to enroll in classes.

For skilled laborers, such as information technology specialists and others that hold professions that are desperately needed in Germany, the new regulation will allow that they can move to Germany together with their families right away, which wasn’t possible before. Family members don’t need to have any language skills before moving to the country.

“We need to attract skilled workers more quickly. We urgently need them in many sectors,” Faeser said. “We want skilled workers to come to Germany very quickly and gain a foothold here.”

The bill will also make it easier to deport criminals, includes extending detention pending deportation for certain offenders from three months to a maximum of six months. The extension is intended to give authorities more time to prepare for deportation, such as clarifying identity, obtaining missing papers and organizing a seat on an airplane, German news agency dpa reported.

“In the future, it will be easier to revoke the right of residence of criminals,” Faeser said. “For offenders, we will make it easier to order detention pending deportation, thus preventing offenders who are obliged to leave the country from going into hiding before being deported.”

Source: Germany eases path to permanent residency for migrants

Filed under Immigration Tagged with , ,

For many young Hong Kong graduates, Canada’s new routes to immigration have turned into a dead end

2021/06/23 Leave a comment

The impact of the five-year limit, designed to encourage younger immigrants:

When the Canadian government invited Hong Kongers to apply for a work permit that Ottawa designed solely for people from the territory, plumbing engineer Kay Pang applied as soon as he could.

The open work permit allows Pang to travel anywhere in Canada to look for a job, but he recently learned that the document — contrary to what the government had promised in February — won’t expedite permanent residency for everybody from Hong Kong. In truth, people who graduated in 2016 or earlier are not eligible.

His realization comes as authorities in Hong Kong, where freedoms have been increasingly restricted since last year, prepare to enforce a law that, according to the Hong Kong Bar Association, could allow them to block people from entering or leaving the territory as of Aug. 1.

However, the bar association’s interpretation of the new law is disputed by the city’s security bureau which says the change is aimed at stopping asylum seekers from coming to Hong Kong and is allowed under a global aviation agreement.

“It’s really sad for me,” said Pang, who graduated from City University of Hong Kong in 2016, about the new challenges on his road to permanent residency. He had planned to come to Vancouver next January to look for career opportunities in robotics engineering.

New paths to permanent residency

Hong Kongers were allowed to apply for the open work permit from February. The permit allows them to spend up to three years in Canada to gain enough work experience here in order to apply for permanent residency.

At the initial announcements in November and February, no details were given about how recently potential applicants for permanent residency would need to have graduated.

On June 8, Immigration Minister Marco Mendicino unveiled more details. There are two new paths to permanent residency exclusively for Hong Kong residents who recently graduated from a Canadian post-secondary institution (“Stream A”), or recently graduated from a Canadian or foreign institution who are working in Canada (“Stream B”).

Applicants via Stream B must hold a degree, diploma or graduate credential obtained in the past five years, on top of at least one year of full-time work experience or 1,560 hours of part-time work in Canada in the past three years.

Many graduates eyeing immigration to Canada with an open work permit prefer Stream B to Stream A, because they don’t want to spend money going back to school.

But if their degree was awarded in 2016 or before, they face not being able to meet the requirements for permanent residency via that stream.

‘Why would you just shut the door?’

Pang, among more than 28,000 people graduating from Hong Kong post-secondary institutions in 2016, applied for an open work permit in March. But even if he landed in B.C. and got a job now, it wouldn’t leave him enough time to get the necessary one year of full-time work experience before his degree becomes ineligible.

Hong Kong software developer Edward Wong is in a similar situation. He received an open work permit in May and booked a flight ticket to Toronto, with plans to settle there, in September.

But Wong, who graduated from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology in 2016, also faces being ineligible for permanent residency.

He said he doesn’t understand why Immigration Canada has created this additional hurdle.

Source: For many young Hong Kong graduates, Canada’s new routes to immigration have turned into a dead end

Filed under Immigration Tagged with , ,

‘Why not us?’: Asylum seekers on COVID-19 front lines demand permanent residency

2020/08/17 Leave a comment

All too predictable, the understandable debates over who’s in and who’s out, which happens with respect to most government programs, whether immigration or other:

Doll Jean Frejus Nguessan Bi says he couldn’t sleep at all last night.

The asylum seeker from Ivory Coast works as a security guard in hospitals and long-term care homes in the Montreal area, where he watched many of his colleagues stop coming in as deaths linked to COVID-19 began to mount this spring.

But while Nguessan Bi kept working, he said he found out Friday that he would be excluded from a new government program to fast-track the permanent residency applications of some asylum seekers working on the front lines during the pandemic.

“Why (not) us? We who gave our hearts and our love… Why are we abandoned?” he said in an interview at a protest camp across the street from Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Montreal riding office Saturday. “What did we do to deserve this?”

Ottawa announced Friday that asylum seekers working in specific jobs in the health-care sector would be eligible for permanent residency without first having to wait for their asylum claims to be accepted, as is typically the process.

Immigration Minister Marco Mendicino said the move came in response to public demand for so-called “Guardian Angels” — many in Quebec — to be recognized for their work.

“They demonstrated a uniquely Canadian quality in that they were looking out for others and so that is why is today is so special,” Mendicino said in an interview Friday afternoon.

But asylum seekers and their supporters say Ottawa’s plan excludes thousands of workers without permanent status in Canada who have laboured on the front lines during the pandemic, often at great personal risk to themselves and their families.

That includes security guards and janitorial staff, factory workers, and farm labourers, among others.

“I have friends who worked with me in security that abandoned (their posts) because they were afraid of getting infected. But I stayed,” said Nguessan Bi.

He said he wants Trudeau and Quebec Premier Francois Legault to do something to help asylum seekers who are not eligible for the new program.

Several dozen people rallied in front of Trudeau’s office on Saturday to demand permanent residency for all asylum seekers.

“It’s an act of recognition. They deserve status,” Joseph Clormeus, a member of Debout pour la dignite, a Montreal advocacy group that organized the rally, told the crowd.

Anite Presume, a Haitian asylum seeker who came to Quebec in August 2017 from the United States, was among the protesters.

She works in a medication factory, and said she kept working during the pandemic despite the risks.

“To take the bus, we were all stressed, but we still went to work because it was essential. They needed medication for the hospitals,” she said in an interview.

She said she has not received a response yet to her application for asylum in Canada, and lives under a cloud of uncertainty and stress about her future.

“It’s a feeling of rejection,” Presume said, about not being included in Ottawa’s regularization program. “They rejected us as if we did nothing.”

To apply for residency under the new program, applicants must have claimed asylum in Canada prior to March 13 and have spent no less than 120 hours working as an orderly, nurse or another designated occupation between the date of their claim and Aug. 14.

They must also demonstrate they have six months of experience in the profession before they can receive permanent residency and have until the end of August 2021 to meet that requirement.

The program was the result of negotiations between the federal government and Quebec, who have had a strained relationship on the question of immigration, and in particular the asylum claimants, in recent years.

Public support has been building for asylum seekers’ demand for permanent residency after it was revealed that refugee claimants were among those toiling in Quebec’s long-term care facilities, which were hard-hit by COVID-19.

Source: ‘Why not us?’: Asylum seekers on COVID-19 front lines demand permanent residency

Filed under Immigration Tagged with , , , ,