MIGRATING TO CANADA TO BECOME MUCH FASTER

“Immigrating to Canada is becoming much more efficient because of hired help, legislative reforms, administrative changes, and over £100 million worth of funding”

Reports the Toronto Sun.

Emigrating to Canada has traditionally been renowned for its long waiting time for visa approval; however, after the changes were implemented the Citizenship and Immigration Canada department announced a 12 per cent increase in the speed in which Canadian visas are granted.

Immigration Minister Jason Kenney said this is an important development for Canada, who are trying to remain a heavyweight in the immigration competition and attract hundreds of thousands of migrants every year, despite rising unemployment levels.

“It’s been at least two decades - a generation - since waiting times went down rather than up. … We’re talking about highly skilled, economic immigrants and we’re competing with places like Australia, New Zealand and the United States for the best and the brightest,” Minister Kenney said.

“We were telling people to wait in the queue for five years. Where do you think the most competitive people are going to go - if they have to wait five years to come to Canada, versus six months for Australia?”

“Our economy is also impacted by the global slowdown but we will not be reducing the number of immigrants this year because of it,” Mr Kenney said.
“If we find downturn is deepened then we will certainly look at modifying the immigration policy to deal with it,” he added.

According to Indopia, this year, the Canadian Government has indicated it would not decrease its Canadian skilled migration program, as it needs skilled workers to be immigrating to Canada to maintain production and stimulate economic growth.

STUDY THROUGH SETTLE IN AUSTRALIA

Migrating to Australia has always been a pretty hard thing to do. Unfortunately for many, the recent changes has made these challenges even greater.

All is not lost though as there are still other options available; One such option being the Australian Student visa.

To obtain a permanent Australian visa under the General Skilled Migration (GSM) program, it requires skills in a particular occupation and applicants must also meet basic criteria relating to age, English language ability and work experience (at least 12 months of skilled work experience in the previous two-year period).

However, overseas student graduates who have completed at least two academic years of study in Australia are an exception to this work experience requirement for permanent Australian visa applications. So, for many people who do not qualify for a permanent Australian visa under the GSM program, due to lack of recognized skills and/or lack of recent skilled work experience, studying in Australia becomes the quickest avenue to obtain a permanent Australian visa.

For example, the Trades Recognition Australia (TRA) assesses the skills of cooks for migration purposes and to recognize an overseas-trained cook, a minimum four to five year period is required by the TRA. A further 12 months of skilled experience is then also required, taking the permanent Australian visa plan for cooks up to five to six years.
Meanwhile, the TRA requirements for Australian-trained cooks need usually a 12-month Certificate III course plus 900 hours of related trade experience. Although recognition by the TRA could be done in 12 months, DIAC require a minimum total of two years of study in Australia to apply for a GSM visa and qualify for an exemption of the recent skilled work experience requirement. So, the Australian education institutions are tailoring trade courses to meet the DIAC requirement. This can mean studying a related second certificate course or a related diploma course for the second year.

Essentially, this means that after two years the majority of the overseas students can apply for a permanent Australian visa and have full permission to work from the time they complete their second year of study.
However, during the two years of study, they have had restricted work rights of no more than 20 hours per week and unrestricted work between semesters.

Studying in Australia not only means that the permanent Australian visa process is shortened by three to four years, the overseas student can work as soon as the course is commenced and is in Australia for the processing of the permanent Australian visa application.

The overseas applicant, however, takes one to 2 years longer to qualify for a permanent Australian visa, and also has to factor in processing time to their overall time line.

Monash University demographer Bob Birrell says that more than 3,200 people gained permanent residency by studying cookery in Australia in 2007 to 2008 and that only a small minority of them are actually capable of gaining trade-level work, because the training simply does not prepare them to do that work.

“Now cooking is an important occupation; it’s in the service sector and is likely to grow, so I think it’s important that we diminish our reliance on overseas people for the cooking trade and try to ensure that the terms and conditions for cooks are such as would attract young people into the industry.”

Curtsy of Visa Bureau