Ukrainian refugees in Canada, the federal budget for 2022 and other news of the week

Job fairs

Starting in May, major Canadian cities will begin holding customary job fairs. Only vaccinated visitors will be allowed in. A fair is planned for May 3 in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Employers from all Atlantic provinces will be represented at the fair. There will be a fair in Toronto in June, Winnipeg in July, and Calgary in August. A fair is planned for November in Vancouver. All of these fairs are organized by Canadian Immigrant magazine in cooperation with provincial organizations that help immigrants adapt and find jobs.

Help for Ukrainians

The Ministry of Immigration is overwhelmed with admitting Ukrainians. The queue for other immigrants is only growing. Russian oppositionists who applied before the war began or have asked for a visitor visa now, Canadian officials refuse to grant asylum or priority processing. That said, one of our subscribers from Ukraine wrote in his Telegram feed that he was granted asylum. He came before the war, applied under a different program, waited two and a half years for a trial, then there was a trial, which he lost, he appealed, and then the other day he got an envelope with a positive decision. It said that asylum was approved due to the situation in Ukraine. Had it not been for the war, he would have had to go home. We recommend to subscribe to our Telegram-channel, there is useful information published every day. All links are in the description to the video.

As of Saturday, April 9, the Department of Immigration has approved more than 30,000 applications for the Canada-Ukraine Emergency Entry Permit. On April 6, the Minister of Immigration said Canada had received more than 112,000 applications from Ukrainians. As of April 1, about 65,000 applications had been submitted and about 12,000 approved. It is not known what the rejection rate is, but it is unlikely to be more than 50%. This means that the Department of Immigration is capable of processing about 18,000 applications per week. For the first quarter of 2022, the department processed 147,000 applications for permanent residency and approved more than 108,000. That is, on average, the ministry processed 12,000 applications per week, twice as many as in 2021.

On April 9, the Canadian prime minister again promised Ukrainians free charter flights, as well as two weeks of hotel accommodation and financial aid for the first time. Canada has allocated another $100 million CAD for humanitarian aid to Ukraine.

Canadian provinces one after another are announcing help for incoming Ukrainians. British Columbia has opened a special hotline and a separate portal in Ukrainian and Russian, where you can find out which school to enrol your children in and how to access free medical services. The province of Ontario has also opened a hotline, and has allocated money to Canadian-Ukrainian community organizations and established a scholarship for Ukrainian students. Saskatchewan sent a delegation to Germany to invite the specialists the province needs and find out on the spot how best to help Ukrainians. The Northwest Territories health minister demanded that the local legislature provide conditions for recruiting nurses from Ukraine.

Canada hosted the first meeting of the Global Working Group on Refugee Labour Mobility, which included representatives from the UN, the International Chamber of Commerce, the Australian Department of Immigration, and various organizations that help refugees around the world. Australia launched a pilot program to accept qualified refugees in July 2021. Canada has tried to accept refugees under existing immigration programs by removing some of the requirements. Now Canada wants to apply the Australian experience. The plan is to accept a certificate from refugees that they have been approved for a loan amount sufficient to settle in Canada, instead of a bank statement. How to implement this in practice has not yet been decided.

Changes in Provincial Laws

The changes that the federal and provincial governments are making to immigration laws are not just for Ukrainian citizens. Saskatchewan has decided to clean up its foreign worker licensing rules. By 2030, the province aims to create 100,000 jobs and increase its population to 1.4 million people. Unlike other Canadian provinces, Saskatchewan, until recently, didn't have a general law which would guarantee transparency and objectivity in confirming foreigners' qualifications. Now the local Ministry of Immigration has established a special unit, which will bring uniformity to the licensing of foreign specialists in more than 60 supervisory bodies in different sectors.

Lawmakers in Newfoundland and Labrador also aligned local laws with those of other provinces and allowed non-residents to run a business in the province. Until April 2022, the local Corporations Act required that at least 25% of a company's executives be Canadian residents. Those foreign companies that wanted to expand and open offices in Newfoundland and Labrador had to register a legal entity in another province or give up that market. There is no more discrimination for non-residents in Saskatchewan. But there is another complication: companies are now obliged to openly publish information about people who have more than 25% of influence on decision-making.

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Two important events took place.

First, in line with inflation, Immigration Canada hiked processing fees for permanent residency applications. The changes will take effect on April 30.

Second, last week, the Canadian government released the federal budget for 2022. The amounts that Canada is investing in various immigration-related projects show the government's current priorities. $317.6 million CAD now and $2.1 billion CAD over five years are allocated to the immigration plan. $37.2 million CAD now and $187.3 million CAD over five years for government programs to help immigrants.

$64.6 million CAD over three years will be spent on speeding up the processing of documents filed by employers: labor market impact assessments. $48.2 million CAD to develop an immigration program for agricultural and fisheries professionals. $29.3 million CAD to create an "Employer Reliability Model" that will make it easier for employers to document and provide decent working conditions for those who are important to the Canadian economy.

The government also plans to amend the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act and the Citizenship Act. The amendments will allow the Department of Immigration to streamline the selection of candidates from the Express Entry pool: those whose skills and experience are now most valuable to the Canadian economy will receive permanent residency faster. Amendments to another law should speed up the process of acquiring Canadian citizenship.

Among the measures taken by the government to increase housing affordability, one affected immigrants. Foreigners have been banned from buying homes in Canada for two years. The exception is vacation homes. To buy a home, you have to be a permanent resident.

Immigration shenanigans

There were not many drawings this past week — only three.

April 5 BC held a general and a targeted drawing. A total of 198 people were invited. Of those, 43 were early childhood educators, 14 were health care professionals, fewer than 5 were paramedics and fewer than 5 were veterinarians.

April 7 Manitoba invited candidates to apply from the province. A total of 223 candidates received invitations. Thirty-four of them were university graduates.