Canada Pauses Skilled Worker and Investor Immigration Programmes

Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism Minister Jason Kenney has announced that effective July 1st, 2012, Citizenship and Immigration Canada will place a temporary pause on new applications to the Federal Skilled Worker Program  and federal Immigrant Investor Program.

While announcing the changes the Minister said, “We have been making lots of changes to our economic immigration system. We will take the next six months to do a lot of the heavy lifting to get us closer to a fast and flexible immigration system.”

Minister Kenney has announced a series of changes to Citizenship and Immigration Canada economic immigration programs. They include:

• eliminating the backlog of old FSWP applications;
• improving the selection of FSWs;
• creating a new Federal Skilled Trades Program;
• modifying the Canadian Experience Class to help transition successful skilled temporary workers to permanent residence;
• changing business immigration programs to target more active investment in Canadian growth companies and more innovative entrepreneurs; and
• moving towards a new application management system, to develop a pool of skilled workers who arrive in Canada ready to begin employment.

The Minister further said, “This temporary pause on new Federal Skilled Worker applications will allow us to set the program on a new course as we intend to launch revised selection criteria soon.  The pause has no impact on the number of workers Canada admits into the country, as CIC continues to process applications already received. Current immigration remains at historically high levels.”

Federal Skilled Worker Program Application intake is expected to resume in January 2013, when the proposed Federal Skilled Worker Class regulatory changes – which will be published in the Canada Gazette in the coming months – are expected to come into force

The temporary pause on Federal Skilled Worker Class applications does not apply to candidates with offers of arranged employment or those applying under the PhD eligibility stream.

Dr. Ahmed Naveed who is a Regulated Canadian Immigration Consultant said that the Minister must have continue to receive the skilled worker class applications till the new proposed changes could be implemented. By shutting off the skilled professionals for about six months will allow the skilled migrants to chose other destinations such as Australia over Canada.

Dr. Naveed further added that while introducing new changes, the Minister must introduce a customer service standard that would set the maximum time for processing of the Canadian immigration and visa applications in Canada and at visa offices around the world. Due to lack of such standard, the visa/immigration application processing times can vary from few months to many years depending on the processing visa office. Other countries have such standards in place then why not Canada can do the same.

Tags: Canada, Canada immigration, Citizenship and Immigration Canada, Federal skilled Worker Immigration, Federal Skilled Worker Programme, Immigration, Jason Kenney, new changes in Canada immigration 2012, Skilled Worker Immigration