There Will be More Pathways – My Opinion

It is “my opinion”, after having attended the recent CAPIC session which covered the technical briefing provided by ICCRC on the upcoming New Immigration Programs, that this is not the end of “advantage to inland candidates” I expect to see more changes, reforms, innovative programs all of them geared to offering an advantage to applicants who are inside Canada as International Students or Temporary Workers.

ICCRC has already issued more than 52,000 invitations to CEC candidates in the year 2021. They further offered an extension of PGWP by 18months to all International Students, which again provides them a huge advantage to participate in a pathway whether federal or PNP.

They have offered interim-public policies to help with restorations and work permit applicants.

All of this indicates heavily towards the fulfillment of the promise made by the Immigration Minister in November 2020, which said he would look at ways for temporary residents to become permanent.

The upcoming TR-to-PR Pathway for students and essential workers provides a golden ticket for several categories of essential workers, who otherwise did not have a chance under any federal or provincial immigration program.

But then there is also a general consensus that this is not fair to many categories of workers who have been left out. It is also unfair to those candidates who are on a short leave in their home country and are now stuck due to flight bans. It is unfair to those candidates who will not be able to obtain their language test results in time. The immigration streams have an intake limit and are bound to be closed before a lot of them will be able to get their results. IELTS and CELPIP earlier reported that their websites had crashed soon after the announcement of a public policy due to abnormally high traffic and rush to book tests.

The language test is an eligibility requirement for these immigration streams.

Since I am #foreverhopeful I am of the opinion that there will be more programs, more streams, more pathways, and more options that will be announced which will offer pathways to students and essential workers.

Whether it is through the proposed reform in Express Entry or through a similar Immigration Pathway.

After all, Canada has a heart and this is its humane side for everyone to see. It is not merely performing a lipservice in acknowledging the efforts of its essential workers, frontline staff, and contributions of the temporary residents, but is now providing them a definitive pathway to “Stay in Canada and call it their home”