On January 1, 2015 Canada's immigration program was dramatically and fundamentally changed. Overnight our immigration program morphed from an applicant driven model, to a government selection driven model. Up until December 31, 2014 an applicant could apply to immigrate to Canada,
2015 promises to be a banner year for Canada's immigration program with dramatic changes in virtually every aspect of program delivery: selection of skilled immigrants, processing of inland spousal applicants, and new criteria for both business immigration and citizenship applicants. Here are the highlights of the many changes in Canada's immigration program in store for the year ahead:
The past few years have been tough ones for business persons seeking to access Canada's Business Immigration program. On July 1, 2011 the Entrepreneur category was suspended and on July 1, 2012 so was the Investor program. On February 11, 2014 the Government of Canada decided to formally terminate both programs.
This past weekend Canada’s Minister of Immigration Chris Alexander formally changed what was previously known as the Live-In Caregiver Program to the new Caregiver Program. Speculation had been circulating for years that the program might be drastically changed including eliminating the Permanent Resident component. Fortunately the residency component has been maintained and the program has been modified to eliminate the need for caregivers to reside with their employers and to allow for speedier processing of permanent resident applications.
Tens of thousands of sponsored family members are admitted to come to Canada every year as permanent residents. While the majority of family members admitted are spouses and partners, the second largest category of admitted family members are the parents and grandparents of Canadian citizens and permanent residents.
The concept of the anchor baby is that non-Canadian citizens will come to Canada to give birth on Canadian soil for the purpose of obtaining Canadian citizenship for their newly born children with a view to obtaining permanent residency, and ultimately citizenship for themselves.
The new Express Entry program is going to completely transform Canada’s Immigration Program. Historically Canada's economic immigration program was an applicant driven responsive program. Individuals who decided that they wanted to immigrate to Canada, submitted an application and the government was bound to consider and assess that application. The number of applications received was always far greater than the number of applications that the government could process and over time a considerable backlog developed of Skilled Worker, Entrepreneur and Investor applicants which ultimately led to the suspension of these categories. The Skilled Worker program was eventually re-opened in 2013 with significant changes but the Investor and Entrepreneur categories have been formally terminated. In order to avoid future backlogs the government has devised a new program entitled Express Entry which is still in the process of being finalized. However, recent Ministers of Immigration have been publicizing CIC's newest immigration model which is set to be introduced by January 2015.
In a news release published in August, 2014, Citizenship and Immigration (CIC) Minister Chris Alexander announced that Canada had welcomed 150,000 new citizens in 2014. Since 2006 Canada has welcomed over 1,300,000 new Canadians.
The spring and summer have been busy ones for Jason Kenney, Minister for Employment and Social Development. In early April he announced the first businesses ever to have been blacklisted for breaching the Temporary Foreign Worker Program. The media blitzkreig that followed lead within days to the complete shut down of the program for anyone in the food and beverage industry. A few weeks later an entirely new Temporary Foreign Worker Program was introduced changing the rules of the game completely and severely limiting the foreign worker program. The changes to Canada's Temporary Foreign Worker Program (TFWP) are significant and all employers who have a need for foreign labour need to know the new rules of the game.
The summer is always a busy time for immigration reforms. This summer brought in significant changes to Canada's citizenship laws. On June 19, 2014 the "Strengthening Canadian Citizenship Act” received Royal Assent fundamentally changing many key aspects of Canada's citizenship laws. A bulletin on CIC's website states as follows:
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