Canada’s Immigration Minister has pledged to cut visa waiting times for would-be economic immigrants to as little six months by 2015.
Canadian Immigration
Speaking in a year-end interview with Postmedia News, Chris Alexander made it clear what his goals are for the coming year.
“[The main challenge for 2014] is delivering better, faster service to immigrants and to visitors to Canada,” he said. “We have to move at the speed of business in our immigration system. Whenever we accept more applications than we process, we’re basically divorcing our immigration flows from our economic needs and that doesn’t serve immigrants well and it certainly doesn’t serve the Canadian economy well.”
Essential to Minister Alexander’s plans to speed up the immigration system will be the successful implementation of a new skilled immigration system.
In the next few months it is expected that Canada will introduce a new Expression of Interest immigration programme similar to the one already used in Australia and New Zealand. This would require an applicant to lodge an Expression of Interest to emigrate – which would be based around a points score taking into account factors including age, skills and previous work experience – to Citizenship and Immigration Canada.
Those who meet the point threshold and have skills and experience in industries most in need of workers will then be invited to apply for a visa. Alexander believes that once this system is in place, then by January 2015 it’ll take just six months for a successful economic applicant to get a visa and, hopefully, not much more than that for their dependents,
Article published 27th December 2013
