39,500 Indians given permanent residence in Canada in 2018

Varinder Singh
Tribune News Service
Jalandhar, July 12

The Trump administration’s policies for curbing the entry of Indians to the US by attempting to curtail the once popular H1-B visas notwithstanding, the Liberal Party-led Canada is working overtime to induce Indians, particularly Punjabis, in a country where ageing population needs educated workforce in the years to come.

The phenomenon was evident from the Immigration Division data that 39,500 Indian citizens were accorded entry in Canada in 2018 alone via its express entry system.

All of these 39,500 Indian citizens have obtained permanent residency (PR) in the maple country.

It was a whopping 51 per cent increase in comparison to entry of Indians to Canada in 2017 as permanent residents.

It was the Immigration Division which conducted admissibility hearings for certain categories of people believed to be inadmissible to or removable from Canada under the law.

It also conducts detention reviews for persons being detained under the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act.

The express entry in a way was an opportunity for citizens of different countries to enter Canada by way of invitation. More than half of all people given permanent residency in Canada hailed from India.

A total of 92,000 people from different countries were given permanent residence by the Liberal government in 2018.

As many as 46 per cent of the invitations were sent to Indian citizens (Of which a large number of people were from Punjab), which indicated that the Trudeau government trusted Indians more than people of other countries for their hard working nature.

The invitations to Indians surpassed the ones accorded to Chinese and Nigerians.

If this was not enough, a large number of Indians working in the US, sources pointed out, were migrating to Canada due to tightening up norms of residence in the US after Donald Trump assumed office.

Indians were already facing difficulties in obtaining H1-B visas and were facing problems like green card back logs.

Proposed US ban on the H1-B visa holders’ wives that they would not be able to work was contributing to diversion of flow of migration of Indians to Canada.

Under its long term ‘talent skimming’ programme, Canada has initiated a number of lucrative immigration programmes suiting different people.

It has come out with Global Skill Strategy to attract investment of innovative companies, helping thousands of businesses and benefitting 40,000 people with a short two-week application processing time.

Similarly, it has come up with the Global Talent Stream which was utilised by more than 1100 Canadian companies to hire more than 4300 highly-skilled foreign workers.

Canada’s Start-up Visa Programme permanent has attracted more than 300 entrepreneurs leading about 200 start-ups that have been launched in Canada.