Canada has raised its immigration thresholds with a goal of welcoming 500,000 new arrivals each year by 2025 to make up for a severe labor shortage, the Immigration Minister announced Tuesday.
More than 900,000 jobs are currently to be filled in many sectors of the country. Unemployment has also hit record lows in recent months, standing at 5.2% in September. To overcome this, Ottawa plans to grant permanent residence to 465,000 people in 2023 (that’s 18,000 more than before), 485,000 in 2024 (that’s 34,000 more), and 500,000 in 2025.
A target of 60% economic migrants
In particular, the federal government intends to improve its screening programs to better respond to “critical job shortages” in sectors “such as health care, skilled jobs, manufacturing, and STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math). By 2025 The goal is for more than 60% of total admissions to be economic immigrants, Sean Fraser said.Canada also aims to reunite families with some members abroad more quickly, but to take in fewer refugees.
In 2021, the country accepted more than 405,000 immigrants, “the largest number we have ever received in a single year,” the Immigration Ministry said in a statement.
Among the group of seven great powers, Canada, with a population of almost 39 million, has the highest proportion of immigrants with nearly one in four Canadians born abroad. Yet the country is also on the cusp of a “record wave” of retirements, Statistics Canada warned in the spring.
Source: BFM TV
