Canada’s Immigration Rollback Leaves In-Country Candidates Facing Uncertain Future

TORONTO — Hundreds of thousands of prospective Canadians are facing an uncertain future as the country backs away from an open-door immigration policy that encouraged the admission of unprecedented numbers of foreign-born individuals, often as students or temporary workers.Seen as an economic stimulus and a solution to a post-Covid labor shortage, the liberal immigration policy saw the number of temporary residents rise to 7.6 percent of the population in 2024, several times higher than the estimated one to one and a half percent in America.But growing public frustration over soaring housing costs and strains on public services, such as schools and hospitals, prompted the government to reverse course beginning that year, aiming to reduce the number of temporary residents to five percent of the population by the end of 2027.“We are taking back control of our immigration system and putting Canada on a trajectory to bring immigration back to sustainable levels,” Finance Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne said while delivering the federal budget in March of this year.The impact of the new policy is already being felt, with a 53 percent drop in admissions of new international students and temporary foreign workers last year and further cuts in student admissions announced in the March budget. Steps to date have brought the share of temporary residents down to 6.4 percent of the population, still well above the five percent target.But that has left legions of persons who are already in Canada and thought they were on the way to permanent residency suddenly facing a much steeper path to their goal than they had anticipated.“I left my country, my family, and everything behind, believing in Canada’s promise of fairness and opportunity,” a 36-year-old migrant with a master’s degree in earthquake engineering from Iran, Sarah Amerinia, said in a recent interview with the Toronto Star. “I studied hard, worked hard, and now I feel it’s all for nothing.”Ms. Amerinia, like many other temporary residents, had been pinning her hopes on Canada’s unique point system for granting permanent residency and a path to citizenship. Those already in the country can accumulate points based on factors such as age, education, language proficiency, and work experience. Having a job offer or a sibling already in Canada can generate additional points. Invitations to apply for permanent residence go out periodically to individuals above a certain point threshold.Now, a major overhaul of that system first reported last week by the Star is expected to place a higher premium on candidates with higher wages and lucrative job offers, reducing the importance of some other factors.“Potential reforms would support the Government’s mission to attract the best talent in the world by ensuring that highly skilled and high-earning candidates are selected in greater numbers,” says an Immigration Department slide deck obtained by the Star.But critics say the changes will discriminate against candidates in lower-paid but needed professions such as nursing, as well as against women and minorities, given that they tend to be less well paid.“In the absence of strong pay equity and in the absence of strong employment equity, we know that women and racialized groups still earn less,” said a senior policy fellow at Toronto Metropolitan University specializing in immigration. “If you’re doing it on what their wages were, you’re building potential inequity into the system,” Naomi Alboim told the Star.Lower immigration targets have also meant that candidates need to secure a higher point total to qualify for permanent residency, a frustration for individuals like Arthur Ma, 25, who entered Canada from China to attend high school in 2015 and went on to receive a bachelor’s degree in Ontario.Mr. Ma’s point score of 495 would have easily qualified him for an invitation in recent years, when any score above 450 was considered sufficient. But the threshold for consideration has risen to 507 or higher in the past two years.“Times have changed,” Mr. Ma told the Star. “There’s more competition now, definitely.”

Canada’s Immigration Rollback Leaves In-Country Candidates Facing Uncertain Future

Canada’s Immigration Rollback Leaves In-Country Candidates Facing Uncertain Future

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