by taking away their 50 percent [residency] credit.”
In mid-March, Mr. McCallum also told reporters that his department would be setting up talks
between the federal government and provincial
officials to look at how to reform Canada’s
Express Entry system. That system, in place since
June 2015, is often the first step to permanent
residency for international students who have
completed their Canadian postsecondary programs and who wish to live and work in Canada
long-term.
Express Entry has been criticized for putting
those graduates in direct competition with other
skilled foreign workers, rather than assessing
them as a separate category as they used to be,
and not valuing their Canadian education as
highly as before. Mr. McCallum said foreign students had been “shortchanged” by Express Entry
and that more needed to be done to attract them
to Canada and encourage them to become permanent residents. The federal-provincial review
of the system was just starting as of early May.
The changes to citizenship requirements and
the plan to review the path to permanent residency are “positive signals,” said Amit Chakma,
president of Western University and chair of the
federal government’s Advisory Panel on Canada’s
International Education Strategy. The panel’s
2012 final report recommended that Canada
double the 239,000 international students it
receives within a decade to build the country’s
future prosperity. As of 2014, Canada had
336,000 international students, nearly 80 percent of them at the postsecondary level.
When it comes to Express Entry, Dr. Chakma
supports returning to a separate assessment category for international student graduates. “It all
depends on what they [the government] come
up with, but I certainly welcome their willingness
to look at some of the challenges we are facing.”
Steffi Hamann, a PhD candidate from Germany, said the government’s announcements
make her “feel really good” about her decision
to continue her academic career in this country.
Ms. Hamann came to the University of Guelph
in 2012 on an Ontario Trillium Scholarship
designed to attract the best and brightest foreign
PhD candidates.
Now in her last year of a doctorate in political
science and international development studies,
looking at food security, Ms. Hamann hopes to
avoid the Express Entry competition to perma-
nent residency by applying through Ontario’s
Immigrant Nominee Program. It has a specific
stream just for PhD graduates (most provinces
and territories can nominate a certain number
of permanent residency applicants that they feel
best meet the province’s needs). That stream also
eliminates the need for her to already have a year’s
worth of full-time Canadian skilled work expe-
rience, generally required under Express Entry.
Still, while she says Canada is more welcoming than many countries, she said there was
panic and disappointment last year when international students learned they would no longer
be assessed in their own separate category for
permanent residency, especially since many pay
higher tuition fees that can reach beyond $40,000
a year for some programs. “There’s a sense ... that
we made this investment and [we’ve] clearly
indicated that we value being educated in this
particular country, so it was a bit of a slap in the
face,” she said.
Slow processing times for study visas can also
be a sore spot for international students. “There
are always complaints about that,” said Navneet
Khinda, former president of the University of
Alberta Students’ Union, adding that clarifying
and simplifying all the immigration processes
international students face would help too. The
Canadian Bureau for International Education
reported a 30 percent increase in study permit
processing times in 2015. However, Citizenship
and Immigration Canada says processing times
have improved, with an average of 38 days in
2015 compared to 48 days in 2013 and even
fewer days for students from Canada’s top source
countries, such as China and India.
The CBIE “hopes that the government will
make it easier for international students to get
study and work permits in a timely manner, as
well as create clear pathways to permanent residency for those international students who
choose to stay and contribute to Canada’s future,”
said the organization’s president Karen McBride
in an emailed statement.
International graduates of Canadian post-secondary programs reported having a harder
time under Express Entry initially because they
usually lacked a Labour Market Impact Assessment (LMIA) filed by an employer to show
whether a foreign worker is needed to fill a job.
While not required to apply for permanent residency, having an LMIA automatically gave a
substantial boost to the number of points the
applicant received under the Express Entry system.
The immigration department has acknowledged
that almost all those successful in the early
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