Immigration.ca - Canada Immigration News - January 2007
According to Charles Beach, Professor of Economics at Queen’s University, Canadian immigration policy is doing a good job of attracting skilled immigrants to this country. Dr. Beach says that the growing importance of education, business and work experience as admission standards to Canada has significantly raised the skill levels of the 250,000 immigrants who come to Canada annually. The result is a group of new immigrants who are younger, better educated and experienced, and more fluent in either French or English than the immigration population as a whole.
The last two decades have seen major changes in immigration policy in Canada, one of the leading immigrant-receiving countries in the world. A distinguishing feature of the Canadian system is that the Immigration Act gives Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC), through Cabinet approval and in consultation with the provinces, considerable flexibility to set target levels for immigration flows by immigrant class. Accordingly, CIC is given leeway to make changes to the relative weights built into the point system, under which Economic Class immigrants are evaluated for entry.
In the mid 1990s, a notable shift occurred in the point system’s weighting scheme. Previously, the weights were based on an occupational preference or gap-filling model where specific occupational needs were identified and those applicants who could fill the needs were given preference for admission. After extensive review, the gap-filling model was substituted by an earnings or human capital model perspective. Under this new approach, more emphasis is placed on the factors that supposedly influence the long-run adaptability of new immigrants. Hence, additional points are awarded to education, age and official language fluency
The numbers show that the amended points-based system draws better-educated, more experienced people to Canada. In 2000 those with university and post graduate degrees jumped to 34 per cent of all immigrants from just 8 per cent in 1980, while the portion of immigrants with only a secondary school education dropped to 34 per cent from 59 per cent over the same period.
The country’s new system may have the desired effect of raising overall skill levels of incoming migrants, but it does little to ensure well-educated newcomers get jobs to match their skills once they are in the country. Under the new point system, it was assumed that the higher a prospective immigrant scored in the education, age and language fluency categories, the more easily he or she would adapt to Canada and the more rapidly he or she would achieve economic parity with native-born Canadians. However, the lack of training, adjustment and wage subsidy programs is a major factor in the slower integration of some well-educated immigrants.
Dr. Beach says that Canada has to do a better job of recognizing the credentials of foreign-born professionals and easing the transition to the Canadian job market.
Sources:
-The Ottawa Citizen, Canada Attracting more Skilled Immigrants by Bert Hill, Friday, October 6, 2006
-Employment-based Permanent Immigration: Examining the Value of a Skills Based Point System by Charles M. Beach and John Deutsch, September 2006
