What does the new Express Entry immigration system mean for employers?

· by Huzaifa Saeed

This month Canada introduced Express Entry, a new economic immigration system

Starting January 1st, 2015, this new system (which replaces a number of older programs that were driven by applications from prospective immigrants) requires people hoping to immigrate to Canada to indicate their interest by providing information online about their language ability, education, work experience, and other human capital attributes. If they meet certain eligibility criteria (under programs like Canadian Experience Class and Federal Skilled Worker Program), their “expressions of interest” is placed in a pool and ranked against others. Citizenship and Immigration Canada would then invite only the best candidates through a point system, prioritizing those with high human capital point scores. More importantly a Labour Market qualifying job offer and/or provincial or territorial nomination (which too often require a job offer), to apply for permanent residency.

The new system arguably puts significantly more responsibility on Canadian employers to control the entry of qualified immigrants. Canada has also eliminated previous programs like a list of high demand professions and instead the new system will accept unlimited number of applications with candidates only able to get an application offer through employer involvement.

How does this affect you as an employer?  

The Hamilton Chamber of Commerce is also a member of the Hamilton Immigration Partnership Council with a number of community organizations. The HIP is currently in the process of developing a campaign for the orientation of employers to the new express entry pool. We expect updates from Citizenship and Immigration on the employer portion of this change throughout Spring 2015. We will be updating our members as soon as we get additional details from relevant sources.

From our initial review of information:

1) Employers will be able to review  the express entry job board to view immigrant applicants from both within Canada and abroad. If candidates meet their criteria, the employers will be able to communicate with them and initiate a zero cost LMIA (Labour Market Impact Assessment) which has a 10 day turnaround period. As a condition an employer will have to post up a job for at least one month and at the end of that period ascertain that they’d prefer to hire the foreign candidate over a Canadian Citizen. With approval of an LMIA the candidate will be fastracked towards a permanent residency application (slated to take a maximum of 6 months) and might receive a temporary permit in the meanwhile.

2) Employers with current employees on a work permit will be able to sponsor their employee towards receiving a permanent residency (as long as the employees qualify under a pre-existing category like the Candian Experience Class or have received a Provincial Nominee approval).


 

TVOs The Agenda recently featured the Ontario Chamber of Commerce’s Josh Hjartarson in a conversation about the new system to understand what’s changing and what it means for the Canada we’re building. Watch the video below.