Canada Immigration News

Canadian immigration minister Jason Kenney will be consulting with various stakeholders on the appropriate levels of immigration to Canada. Canada currently has one of the highest per capita immigration rates in the world.

"We want people's views on what is the right mix of our various immigration programs, how do we ensure that immigrants succeed economically, because when immigrants get good jobs, Canada succeeds," Kenney said.

Ottawa, Canada has launched a new skilled immigration strategy aimed at attracting more immigrants by providing better integration and support services to newcomers and immigrants already in Canada.

The plan will bring together 12 Canadian immigration and settlement agencies, as well as employers, and social service providers to help migrants settle into the community.

Canada has limited the number of federal skilled worker applications to 10,000 per year. Canada immigration hopes that reducing immigration numbers will help Canada deal with its backlog of immigration applications.

The Canadian federal skilled worker scheme allows skilled migrants to obtain a permanent residence visa for themselves and their family if they can score enough points on a points test similar in some respects to those used by other countries such as Australia and Denmark.

Canada will introduce a ten-year, multiple entry visit visa for Indian nationals starting in the middle of July 2011. Currently, the maximum validity of visitor visas for Indian nationals is five years.

"The 10-year visas will be available from mid-July," said Bruce Grundison, Deputy Immigration Programme Manger of the Canadian High Commission.

He stated that some technical issued needed to be worked out in the interim.

If you wish to emigrate to Canada under the Canada Skilled worker immigration category you only have about one month left before the new occupation list comes into place. If you have at least one year experience in one of the 24 occupations that are still on the list you should apply as soon as possible. There is no guarantee that your occupation will still be an eligible occupation for the Canada skilled worker category when the new list is announced.

Some economists in Canada are saying that Canada should welcome another 100,000 immigrants a year.

York University's Tony Fang and the University of Toronto's Peter Dungan and Morley Gunderson say that raising immigration numbers in Canada will increase gross domestic product, lead to increased investment in the Canadian property market, and lead to increased spending which will boost Government tax revenues.