2024 - Immigration Lawyer Vancouver, Canada | Sas & Ing Immigration Law Centre
 

Home2024 - Immigration Lawyer Vancouver, Canada | Sas & Ing Immigration Law Centre

As immigration lawyers practicing with nearly 50 years of collective experience, we have been asked many times by prospective immigrants whether they should pursue studies in both official Canadian languages: English and French, with a view to enhancing their chances for qualifying for permanent residence in Canada. As we live and practice in British Columbia, most of these requests are from persons who have proficiency in English, having either studied or worked in Canada utilizing their English language skills. Since the dawn of Canada’s Express Entry selection system on January 1, 2015, our answer has typically been that the reward is not worth the effort. With both of us personally having studied several languages in addition to English, we can tell you that pursuing language studies takes a considerable investment of time and effort. (You can cram for a history or geography exam but not for a language exam!). However, the new Canadian immigration world order is a very different place and Canada is placing a premium on French language proficiency (outside of Quebec) such that this skill set provides an opportunity to acquire not only an education in Canada but also work experience and permanent residence! Let’s take a look at the options for a francophone applicant to achieve Canadian immigration status.

Every year Canada’s immigration minister has until November 1st to set the annual immigration targets for the following year. Last week Canada unveiled its new levels plan significantly reducing the targets for both permanent and temporary immigration. This is a dramatic change from the Trudeau government’s steady increase in immigration levels over the past decade. Let’s review some of the more significant features of last week’s announcement and see how they compare.

Effective November 8, 2024 it will cost Canadian employers 20% more to hire foreign workers under Canada’s Temporary Foreign Worker Program’s (TFWP) High-Wage Stream. The latest announcement made on October 21, 2024 by the Minister of Employment, Workforce Development and Official Languages, the Honourable Randy Boissonnault, is intended to further drive down overall temporary immigration levels in Canada.

Over the past year, we have seen dramatic changes to Canada’s international student program. Canada has gone from setting out the welcome mat for international students to pulling the rug out from underneath them by turning Canada’s international student program upside down. In recent months international students have been held responsible for many of Canada’s ills including housing shortages, overcrowding of schools, raiding food banks, and causing border crossing traffic jams by making “flagpole” applications. As a result, as early as October 2023, the Canadian government announced the first of what would become an avalanche of changes targeting Canada’s international student program. Let’s see what is in store for the intrepid international student.

On September 18, 2024, Canada’s Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship, the Honourable Marc Miller, announced further aggressive policies designed to reduce the overall number of temporary residents admitted to Canada each year.  This latest announcement continues the yearlong trend of implementing drastic immigration changes with little to no notice. From reinstating visitor visa requirements for Mexican nationals to reducing the number of foreign workers Canadian employers can hire under the Temporary Foreign Worker Program, virtually no area in Canadian immigration law has been left untouched this year, and it is only September! In this blog, we will review upcoming changes to Canada’s temporary resident program and let you know what to look out for as we approach the end of 2024.

On August 6, 2024, the Honourable Randy Boissonnault, Minister of Employment, Workforce Development and Official Languages issued a statement in which he publicly mused about the possibility of reducing the number of foreign workers in Canada by prohibiting employers from certain parts of Canada from hiring low-wage workers through the Temporary Foreign Worker Program (TFWP). Less than three weeks later, on August 20, 2024, the Minister took the first such step by approving a temporary pause prohibiting employers located in the Montreal economic region from employing workers earning less than $27.47 per hour through the TFWP. Only six days later, on August 26, the Minister further announced another series of policy changes that will make it more difficult for Canadian employers to hire low-wage temporary foreign workers across Canada. What is driving these changes and what should employers be prepared for?

For many years, if not decades, Canada has had a love-hate relationship with our foreign worker program. We routinely swing back and forth from facilitating foreign workers to come to Canada to fill labour shortages to restricting the ability of employers to bring temporary labour to the country.  At present, we seem to be, once again, at the restrictive and limiting swing of the pendulum.  Employers need to know what they are facing in this ever-changing and compliance based environment that is the current norm.

On June 3, 2024 the Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship, the Honourable Marc Miller, announced that his department will soon be overhauling Canada’s caregiver immigration programs. The news was timely since it came two weeks before Canada’s most recent five-year caregiver pilot programs expired on June 17, but it can also be viewed as disappointing because few details were shared about how the new programs will operate.

The delivery of Canada’s immigration program is a shared responsibility between Canada’s Minister of Immigration Refugees and Citizenship (IRCC), the Honourable Marc Miller and the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness, the Honorable Dominic Le Blanc as is set out in Section 4 of the Immigration, Refugees and Protection Act (IRPA).

Sas and Ing Immigration Law Centre LLP

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