Introduction
This week, the Immigration Minister issued a special news release announcing
Reasons for Decrease
3. Parental sponsorships were closed in the past 2 years to be opened this year for only 5000 applications based on very restrictive criteria. This quota was filled in less than one month after the category opened in January.
4. The Conservatives have been considering language requirements for spousal sponsorships. They tried to couch it in terms of protection of women - that in order to protect women, they needed to pass language tests in order to be qualified to be sponsored. After much protest from experts and the public who heard wind of this, they have temporarily backed off from this ridiculous stance.
Screening Criteria
The fact is, the main criteria for persons to qualify for permanent residence in Canada is high skilled Canadian work experience and English ability. If you don't have either, your ability to immigrate is severely limited.
Canadian Work Experience
Without a work permit to work in Canada, it is almost impossible for a Chinese person to qualify for permanent residence under an economic category (but for a limited number of Provincial Nominee Programs and 500 spots for PhD students).
Canada allows citizens aged 18-35 of a number of countries to obtain work permits to work in Canada under the International Experience Class. For the most part, these work permits are open which allows the holders to work anywhere they want in Canada. The only criteria to obtaining these open work permits is that you have to be under 35 and a citizen of one of the listed countries. The total amount of work permits issued under this category this year was over 68,000. Citizens of the following countries have had the highest number of work permits issued to them under this category: France (14,000), Australia (11,500), Ireland (10,700), Japan (6500), and United Kingdom (5350)). Canada allowed more people from each of these countries to come and work than the total amount of persons under the eligible occupations for the Skilled Worker class (5000). With these work permits, citizens of these countries can work and qualify for permanent residence under the Canadian Experience Class after working in Canada in high skilled position for one year. Noticeably, the PRC is NOT one of these countries.
Language Requirement
It is now mandatory for an applicant to pass an English exam in almost every Federal Economic Immigration category. It is also a requirement to pass it in order to qualify for citizenship. The Conservatives are even talking about requiring it for spousal sponsorship.
These language requirements have severely impacted persons from China from being able to immigrate and settle permanently in Canada. In a recent study about the English language exams that is published on CIC's own website here, it was found that "Members of both East Asian (with the exception of Tagalog speakers) and Southeast Asian language categories appear to have been disadvantaged relative to other language groups." More people from Asia fail the language exams than from any other region in the world and making the language exams a mandatory requirement for citizenship and permanent residence makes it much more difficult for people from Asia to immigrate and become citizens.
Conclusion
The fact that the Minister posted an article specifically talking about Chinese people means that what they are doing to our community is getting noticed. Many people in the Chinese community can see that it is getting significantly harder for Chinese persons to immigrate to Canada and to obtain citizenship. It is time we said enough is enough. We need to speak against this now!
This week, the Immigration Minister issued a special news release announcing
"Welcoming record numbers from China in 2013" As an Chinese immigration lawyer who has seen the systematic closing of immigration programs for Chinese persons since this government took over, I am appalled.
In the news release the government stated that they were proud to have admitted over 34,000 Chinese citizens as permanent residents in the 2013. That is 15% less than the number of Chinese citizens who were admitted in 2005 (40,000) before the Conservatives came into power, over 8 years ago! This is despite the fact that Chinese students have more than doubled in
Canada since then and Chinese citizens have better English skills and
high skilled work experience than ever before.
Reasons for Decrease
What are the reasons for the dramatic decrease? Consider the following:
1. Skilled worker application process has all but closed for persons from overseas.
- The limited 24 eligible occupations which did not require a Labour Market Opinion approval allowed only 300 applications for each category, many of the popular categories were filled up within weeks of the program opening.
- All applicants also need to obtain a very high result in the English/French language exams (6.0 in IELTS for each Reading, Writing, Speaking, and Listening categories). These are university level language requirements and even if a person has enough points otherwise to pass based on their work experience, education, etc., if they don't pass their language test, he/she would not qualify.
- Even those who had qualified under the old system for the Skilled Worker Class whose applications were still in queue had their applications returned last year
3. Parental sponsorships were closed in the past 2 years to be opened this year for only 5000 applications based on very restrictive criteria. This quota was filled in less than one month after the category opened in January.
4. The Conservatives have been considering language requirements for spousal sponsorships. They tried to couch it in terms of protection of women - that in order to protect women, they needed to pass language tests in order to be qualified to be sponsored. After much protest from experts and the public who heard wind of this, they have temporarily backed off from this ridiculous stance.
Screening Criteria
The fact is, the main criteria for persons to qualify for permanent residence in Canada is high skilled Canadian work experience and English ability. If you don't have either, your ability to immigrate is severely limited.
Canadian Work Experience
Without a work permit to work in Canada, it is almost impossible for a Chinese person to qualify for permanent residence under an economic category (but for a limited number of Provincial Nominee Programs and 500 spots for PhD students).
Canada allows citizens aged 18-35 of a number of countries to obtain work permits to work in Canada under the International Experience Class. For the most part, these work permits are open which allows the holders to work anywhere they want in Canada. The only criteria to obtaining these open work permits is that you have to be under 35 and a citizen of one of the listed countries. The total amount of work permits issued under this category this year was over 68,000. Citizens of the following countries have had the highest number of work permits issued to them under this category: France (14,000), Australia (11,500), Ireland (10,700), Japan (6500), and United Kingdom (5350)). Canada allowed more people from each of these countries to come and work than the total amount of persons under the eligible occupations for the Skilled Worker class (5000). With these work permits, citizens of these countries can work and qualify for permanent residence under the Canadian Experience Class after working in Canada in high skilled position for one year. Noticeably, the PRC is NOT one of these countries.
Language Requirement
It is now mandatory for an applicant to pass an English exam in almost every Federal Economic Immigration category. It is also a requirement to pass it in order to qualify for citizenship. The Conservatives are even talking about requiring it for spousal sponsorship.
These language requirements have severely impacted persons from China from being able to immigrate and settle permanently in Canada. In a recent study about the English language exams that is published on CIC's own website here, it was found that "Members of both East Asian (with the exception of Tagalog speakers) and Southeast Asian language categories appear to have been disadvantaged relative to other language groups." More people from Asia fail the language exams than from any other region in the world and making the language exams a mandatory requirement for citizenship and permanent residence makes it much more difficult for people from Asia to immigrate and become citizens.
Conclusion
The fact that the Minister posted an article specifically talking about Chinese people means that what they are doing to our community is getting noticed. Many people in the Chinese community can see that it is getting significantly harder for Chinese persons to immigrate to Canada and to obtain citizenship. It is time we said enough is enough. We need to speak against this now!
