Canadian Immigration News

Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Mexican President Felipe Calderon will be meeting this week to discuss increased labour mobility between their countries. Building on a current successful program that brings in thousands of Mexican agricultural workers every year, the Canadian government would like to bring in even more Mexican workers to deal with Canada’s chronic labour shortages.

For most students across Canada, this week marks the first week of classes in the 2009-2010 school year. Last week, a newcomer orientation program that helps young immigrants learn about what to expect on their first day at a Canadian school was held in the Kitchener-Waterloo region in Ontario.

A new Statistics Canada 2006 report reveals that the province of Manitoba has one of the highest success rates in the country with respect to immigrants finding work after they arrive. Not only do immigrants in Manitoba have among the highest employment rates and lowest unemployment rates in Canada, the positive results reflect on very recent immigrants (those who have lived in Manitoba for five years or less) as well.

Tom Carter, a Canada Research Chair in Urban Change and Adaptation at the University of Winnipeg did a review of the Manitoba Provincial Nominee Program (MPNP) for a recent issue of the Journal of International Migration and Integration. His conclusion was that the Manitoba PNP is one of the world’s best.

For the first time ever, the province of Manitoba welcomed the largest annual number of immigrants per capita in Canada. The Manitoba population of 1,186,679 received 10,800 immigrants between July 1, 2006 and June 30, 2007. Manitoba’s overall population growth over the one-year period was the second-largest it has been in 21 years. Most newcomers came from the Philippines, Germany, India, China, and El Salvador.

ManitobaLabour and Immigration Minister Nancy Allan recently appointed Ximena Munoz as the province's first Fairness Commissioner responsible for improving qualifications recognition for skilled immigrants in Manitoba and forimplementing the Fair Registration Practices in Regulated Professions Act.

With the success of the Manitoba Provincial Nomination Program (PNP), the province of Manitoba welcomes about 200 newcomers every week, a number that is projected to double by 2017. The provincial population and workforce have consequently become more and more culturally and linguistically diverse.

Continually striving to be a more attractive destination for Canadian immigrants, Canadian provinces are investing heavily in immigrant services. Ontario just opened the first of a set of five new Welcome Centres and Manitoba recently announced a new immigrant settlement strategy.

The RBC Royal Bank Scholarship for New Canadians was created for students who have been through the Canadian immigration process. Recognizing how immigration has shaped Canada’s cultural, social, and economic development, the scholarship rewards the efforts of students who have succeeded academically while simultaneously adjusting to life in a new country.

A recent Citizenship and Immigration Canada report recommends that the federal government retroactively restore Canadian citizenship to thousands of 'Lost Canadians'. These people have had their citizenship denied or unknowingly allowed to expire because of several obscure clauses in the 1947 Citizenship Act.