As Canada continues to recover from the COVID-19 Pandemic, employers are actively looking to fill hundreds of thousands of vacant positions in all sectors across the country. This provides potential applicants wanting to immigrate to Canada a window of opportunity to work in Canada.
To help Canada emerge successfully from the negative impacts of the pandemic, the government is focusing on immigration as the key to fuel Canada’s economy. Not only does the government want to encourage immigrant workers, the country’s economic growth depends on it.
Regardless of the issues that Canada currently faces, the country remains a top destination for global talent. To help maintain Canada’s economic growth, the government wants to ensure that businesses and employers have access to the correct skilled workers they require. Therefore, the correct worker for a proposed job will have a seamless transition to working in Canada.
On April 22, 2022, the Honourable Sean Fraser, Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship, announced that Express Entry draws will soon resume and that invitations for candidates to apply for permanent residence will begin in early July. This will allow for a new wave of immigrants who have been waiting to apply to have another avenue to immigrate to Canada.
Minister Fraser has also announced a new temporary policy regarding post-graduate work permit extensions. This temporary policy will give recent international graduates with expiring temporary status an opportunity to stay in Canada longer. This will allow the applicants to continue to gain work experience to have a better chance of qualifying for permanent residency. Starting in summer 2022, former international students who are in Canada and have a post-graduate work permit expiring between January and December 2022 will qualify for an additional work permit of up to 18 months.
Talented and skilled international graduates play a vital role in addressing the Canadian labour shortage. Tens of thousands are able to successfully transition to permanent residence each year, including more than 157,000 former students who became permanent residents in 2021, with more than 88,000 of them transitioning directly from a post-graduation work permit to permanent status.
The Minister also announced new measures for those who applied for permanent residence through the temporary resident to permanent residency pathway (TR to PR Pathway) last year. The TR to PR Pathway is a limited-time pathway to permanent residence for qualifying temporary residents and their families. The purpose of the limited-time pathway is to invite a broad range of individuals already working in Canada to apply to stay permanently.
While closed to new applications since November 2021, the process of applications will continue. Taking effect this summer, the policy changes announced include: (1) applicants will no longer be required to remain in Canada while their application is being processed; (2) applicants who apply for an open work permit while waiting for their permanent residence application to be finalized will be able to get work permits valid until the end of 2024. This will ensure that all permanent residence applications will be finalized before applicants will need to apply to extend their temporary status again; and (3) to support family reunification, immediate family members who are outside Canada and who were included in a principal applicant’s permanent residence application will be eligible for their own open work permit.
As Canada strives to bounce back from the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, it is important to get your foot in the door to start the process of immigrating to Canada and to take advantage of these new immigration opportunities.
If you would like to learn more about your pathway to permanent residence or assess your Canadian immigration options, please contact sonias@gands.com or call 416 863-5985 to book a consultation.
