Canada Pushes India, China & the Philippines for Action on Immigration Fraud

Canada’s immigration minister Jason Kenney is travelling to China, India and the Philippines this week to discuss, among other issued, the problem of so-called ‘fraudulent marriages’.

The visit comes on the heels of a series of public consultations the minister has started on the issue. Fraudulent marriages are those where a Canadian citizen or a permanent resident sponsors someone abroad as a spouse, but the spouse enters into marriage just to get to Canada and leaves the person who sponsored once he or she lands in the country.

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Canada Boosts Funding To Help Skilled Immigrants From India, China & Philippines

Canada is pumping millions of more dollars to make it easier and faster for Indians immigrating to Canada to settle down professionally and personally in their new country.

Under a new plan unveiled, 15 million dollars will be spent to expand the current foreign credentials recognition and labour market programmes offered by the Canadian government in New Delhi, Manila and Guangzhou in China.

Canada’s federal minister for Citizenship and Immigration, Jason Kenney, says the new funding will help more would-be immigrants from these three countries to jump-start their professional lives in their new country by starting the process to have their qualifications recognised even before they leave their home countries.

The money will go to the Canadian Immigration Integration Project (CIIP), which is run by the Association of Canadian Community Colleagues (ACCC). The Integration Project began its services on a pilot basis in 2007, and so far more than 7,000 have gone through  its pilot programmes.

According to Canadian officials, the three offices, along with a soon-to-be opened office in London to offer services to Nordic and Arab countries, will offer services to more than 70% of the immigrants selected under Canada’s federally run skilled workers immigration programme. Furthermore, it will also offer services to more than 40 percent of immigrants selected under the country’s provincial nominees programme.

The free sessions offered by the Project include labour market information, individual advice and planning and the referral to the various services available at the federal and provincial levels. There will also be on-line tools for a number of issues, including help immigrants begin their licensure process even before they arrive.

Furthermore, as not everyone would be able to access the services in person, the ministry has developed an online version, and this can be accessed at www.credentials.gc.ca.

The new funding is an acknowledgement that the Canadian government has taken seriously the concerns raised by skilled immigrants and settlement groups who say one of their biggest challenges is to have foreign credentials recognised.

More Money, New Deals To Help Immigrants

Canadian government has already allocated 50 million dollars over a two-year programme to develop a common national approach towards recognition of foreign credentials.

There has also been a Pan-Canadian Framework for the Assessment and Recognition of Foreign Qualifications deal between the federal provincial and territorial governments to facilitate faster recognition of foreign credentials.

Under the programme, a skilled immigrant will know within a year of applying whether or not his or her credentials be recognised here, and to what level.

Canada Opens Doors To Indian Students

Canada welcomes India’s higher education students.

This is basically the message the Canadian federal government and the various provincial governments are trying to impart to Indians wanting to go abroad for higher studies.

And towards this end, Canada has implemented a number of strategies, including promoting community colleges, where the costs can be lower than universities but whose degrees are recognised throughout the country, and a fast-track system to process ‘genuine’ visa applications.

And just recently, Jean Charest, the Premier of the French province of Quebec, announced in India that foreign students who complete higher studies in his province will be given a Certificate of Selection which in effect will put them on a fast track to obtaining Canadian citizenship.

At present, one has to have lived at least 1095 continuous days in Canada with permanent residence status to be able to apply for Canadian citizenship. Each day spent in Canada legally but without a permanent residence (for example, with a student permit) will be counted as half a day.

The new Quebec system came into effect Feb 14, and will be valid only for those who have completed bachelors, masters or doctoral studies.

Quebec officials hope this accelerated path to Canadian citizenship will attract more Indian students to their province. Quebec officials say that at present about 4,000 of the 25,000 foreign students in the province are from India.

The Quebec move is part of a major offensive launched by Canadian educational institutions and the government to attract more Indian students to Canada.

Fast Track System For Indian Students

While a number of educational institutions have signed bilateral projects with Indian counterparts, the Canadian government launched a major initiative early last year. Named the Student Partners Program, the program was launched last April between the Canadian visa offices in India and twenty members of the Association of Canadian Community Colleges (ACCC).

And in the first nine months, the program reported that the Canadian visa offices received more than four thousand applications, and that the approval rate has doubled. Furthermore, the processing time is also much faster, with the average of about two and half weeks.

Canadian officials feel that with the spate of attacks on Indian students in Australia, prospective students might be willing to consider Canada as an alternate location to pursue their studies.

According to one study done by the Canadian foreign affairs and international trade ministry, the foreign students sector contributed more than 6.5 billion dollars to Canadian economy in 2008.

Canada’s New Project to Help Would-Be Immigrants

The Canadian government is funding a 1.7 million dollar project to help immigrants who want to migrate to Canada find the necessary information ranging from labour market training to getting their qualifications accredited to Canadian equivalent.

The fund was given to the Toronto based JVS to develop the Integrated Pre-Arrival Services Online project and will help immigrants from China, India and the Philippines.

This is part of a 50-million dollar fund given to Canada’s provinces and territories to resolve the ongoing problem of foreign credential recognition in Canada. The federal government has also announced a Pan-Canadian Framework for the assessment and Recognition of Foreign Qualifications.

As part of this Framework, immigrants who apply to be recognised or licensed to work in certain sectors will be informed within a year whether their qualifications will be recognized.

The Canadian government’s foreign credentials website is an excellent source of information. And if you want to see how you might fare in the different provinces, try this Working in Canada link.

Call for Canada to Bring in More Indian Students

India can expect more attention from Canadian universities and even the government’s officials responsible for immigration.

This, after an expert study called for dedicated effort to woo Indian students, not just as a source of foreign exchange, but also as an investment in cementing firm political, economic and cultural relationships with an emerging powerhouse.

In his study, titled ‘A New Direction for the Canada-India Relatiionship, Professor Ryan Touhey castigates the current status of Canada’s efforts to attract Indian students.

And Touhey has hard numbers to back up his complaint: Of the more than 150,000 Indian students going abroad every year for studies, less than three percent – about 4,000 – come to study at the various universities and colleges in Canada. Compare this to the 80,000 that go to the USA and 40,000 to Australia every year. Even New Zealand, which has much weaker links to India than Canada, with its more than half a million Indians spread throughout the country, gets more than 6,000 students every year.

Economic & Political Advantages

For one thing, attracting foreign students is good for the economy, as they pay much more than what locals pay for their studies.

A case in point is Australia.

Since the nineties, Australia has invested heavily in attracting Indian students with a number of annual events throughout the country. The foreign students sector itself is said to be the third largest foreign exchange earner, with annual earnings of about 12 billion dollars. And the estimated 100,000 Indian students are the second largest group next to Chinese.

The importance Australians pay for their foreign student component was very evident during the racially motivated attacks on Indian students in May of this year. Conversations were held at the highest level between officials of both countries, and recently even the Australian deputy prime minister was in India to reassure that Indian students are welcome.

But it is not just economy that benefits from having Indian students, says Prof. Touhey.

It is also about building future relationships.

India, along with China, is emerging as an economic powerhouse and nations are hurrying to build relationships with current leaders of those nations. But today’s students are future leaders and once they return to their home countries and rise up in life, they will fondly remember all things Canadian, and this will help Canada politically, says the study.

80,000 Foreign Students Come to Canada Annually

About 80,000 foreign students come to Canada every year and recently the government announced it was keen on increasing this number. At present, Canada offers a host of incentives for foreign students and these include allowing them to work here after studying and an easier path to permanent residency in the country.