Significant Decrease in the Point Requirements in 25th Express Entry Draw - New Draw happened at 453 points

The latest draw from the Express Entry pool, and the 25th since the immigration selection system was launched just over a year ago, took place on January 13, 2016. This draw sees a decrease in the number of Comprehensive Ranking System  (CRS) points required by candidates for Canadian immigration in order to receive an Invitation To Apply (ITA) for Canadian permanent residence.

A positive start to a new year under a new government

Since the Canadian federal election took place on October 19, 2015, a total of seven Express Entry draws have taken place. Each of these draws has selected a portion of candidates who do not have a qualifying job offer in Canada or a nomination from a Canadian province. Moreover, the CRS point requirement since the first of these most recent seven draws has decreased from 489 to 453.

This latest draw is also the second to take place within the first two weeks of 2016. In contrast, the first draw of 2015 took place on January 31.

Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC, formerly known as Citizenship and Immigration Canada, or CIC) recently stated that 2016 would see more regular draws from the pool, with an increase in the number of candidates issued ITAs in each draw.

“The number of invitations issued per round is expected to increase as the pre-Express Entry inventory of applications is finalised. In turn, it is expected that the minimum score of those that are invited to apply will drop,” stated an IRCC Policy Analyst during a webinar hosted by IRCC on December 16, 2015,

The Policy Analyst added that "we expect that in the new year when our rounds start growing — to meet our new levels plan — that the score will reduce."

From 461 to 453: A small but significant difference

While a decrease of eight points between two draws may appear negligible on first glance, the difference between 461 and 453 is in many cases quite profound.

The CRS awards points based on a range of factors, including a candidate’s age, level of education, work experience (both in Canada and international), language proficiency, and whether the candidate has a qualifying job offer or provincial nomination certificate. Candidates may also be awarded points for certain combinations of what are called “skills transferability” factors, as well as the core human capital credentials of a spouse or common-law partner, if applicable. If a candidate does not have a job offer or provincial nomination, he or she may be invited to apply based on points awarded for core human capital and skills transferability alone.

The decrease from 461 to 453 allows certain candidates, who may not have been awarded a bounty of points for one factor, to compensate for this through strong credentials in other areas. This circumstance is likely to become more apparent if and when IRCC continues to increase the regularity of the draws while also increasing the number of candidates selected.

Read more at http://www.canadavisa.com/news/significant-decrease-in-crs-point-requirement-in-25th-express-entry-draw-for-immigration-to-canada-13-01-2016.html#biKL4wjBWsDQXeAQ.99

Changes to Canadian Citizenship

Who will be affected by the changes to Canadian citizenship? 
Anyone who holds or is eligible for another citizenship is vulnerable to the citizenship stripping provisions of Bill C-24 if they commit any of the crimes included in the Bill. The dual citizenship can be due to the fact that you immigrated from a country that lets you keep the citizenship after attaining Canadian Citizenship or because you were born outside Canada and are eligible to get the Citizenship of that country. It also include the children of those immigrants as some countries allow the citizenship of the offspring of all citizens as their birth right.

Why will this turn dual citizens into ‘second class’ citizens? 
Now if turn this concept of who gets stripped upside down, this law essentially says that some Canadians, who have no other citizenship and no eligibility for citizenship anywhere else, are Canadians forever! Other Canadians, including dual citizens – who have Canadian citizenship and the citizenship of another country at the same time – could possibly have their citizenship taken away, even if they were born in Canada just because of their back ground. It goes against what Canada stands for. We are talking about exclusion rather than inclusion. Even if government never takes their citizenship away, the fact remains that their citizenship is not permanent and secure.

Why does the law only apply to dual citizens and those people who are eligible to obtain another citizenship?
According to international Humanitarian law, it’s illegal for any country to take away anyone’s citizenship leaving them “stateless”. Meaning they do not belong to any country. So Bill C-24’s citizenship revocation clauses apply to only Canadians with dual citizenship, because stripping their Canadian citizenship will still leave them with other citizenship.

Under what conditions the Canadian Citizenship can be revoked? 
Bill C-24 lists certain criteria for revoking Citizenship, like being convicted of or are suspected of involved in activities that endanger Canada and its interests. Examples can be taking part in armed offence against Canada or supporting/providing help in such offence. Regardless, dual citizens now have weaker rights of citizenship simply because it is possible to take their citizenship away. Legal experts say that there is no stopping the government on adding more crimes to this list in future as the law has already been passed and it is only a matter of updating it.

Does this really apply to Canadians who don’t have another citizenship, but could be eligible for another citizenship?
Like mentioned above, International laws stops a country from stripping a person of its citizenship for fear of leaving them “stateless” but Canadian Citizens who are born on Canadian soil but are eligible for citizenship of another country due to their parents and background are vulnerable to this clause. They may never have never visited of that other country and they may have only know Canada as their home, they could still be stripped of citizenship if convicted or suspected of eligible crimes.

What is Implied Status

If a temporary resident has applied to extend their period of authorized stay in Canada before it has ended, the period of their stay in Canada is extended until a decision is made on their application pursuant to subsection 183(5) of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Regulations (IRPR).  Thus, even if an individual is days away from the expiry of their work or study permit, they will still be able to obtain implied status so long as their extension application is received before the official expiry date on their permit is reached.

Once on implied status, a temporary resident who has applied for a renewal of their work or study permit has a right to continue working or studying under the same conditions until a final decision is made on their renewal application. However, to maintain their implied status it is imperative that a temporary resident remain in Canada throughout the processing of their renewal application. Implied status will be lost immediately upon exiting Canada.

Open Work Permits for Spouses of Canadian citizens or permanent residents

Effective December 22, 2014, Citizenship & Immigration Canada (CIC) will be issuing Open Work Permits to certain spouses or common-law partners who are applying for permanent residence from inside Canada.  Also previously, sponsored spouses would have to wait until first stage approval to be issued open work permits. Since the first stage approval is taking nearly 16 months, it is creating major hardships in a way, that, these people cannot work while living in Canada and while waiting for their applications to be finalized.

Applicants who have already submitted their application for permanent residence under the Spouse/Common-Law class but have not yet applied for an open work permit can do so with immediate effect.

If an applicant has already received an approval in principal, then they have the option of applying for a work permit online.

Applicants who have yet to submit their applications for permanent residence can also complete an application for a work permit and submit along with their application for permanent residence.

Toronto ranked ‘best place to live’ in Economist ranking of cities around the world

The City of Toronto has been named “best place to live” in Economist ranking of cities around the world

When Canada’s largest city was weighed across six indicators including liveability, and food security, Toronto bested a shortlist of 50 other cities to qualify as “best overall.”

Montreal—the only other Canadian city examined in the report—scored second place.

Toronto only earned eighth place in the Safe Cities index (Tokyo was #1), but rose to the top when authors factored in Toronto’s place in five previous Economist rankings: Livability, cost of living, business environment, democracy and food security.

“Toronto in Canada is a consistent performer across the five other indexes, putting it top overall,” read the report.

The Ontario capital did not top any single index, but generally stuck to the top 10.

The only exception was cost of living, where Toronto fell behind a pack of contenders including Tehran, Rio de Janeiro, Abu Dhabi and even San Francisco.

While Canadian cities dominated the top 10 “best place to live” rankings, Australia scored two with Melbourne and Sydney, the United States ranked three (Washington, San Francisco and Chicago) and European cities (Amsterdam, Stockholm, Zurich) filled the remainder.

Canada's Express Entry program to fulfill immediate requirements of the country

Canadian government has newly kick started the new immigration program known as express entry for skilled professionals’ hassle-free entry to the country. This new immigration is replaced with the previous year’s temporary work permit. Canadian express entry program has come to force on 1 Jan 2015 by providing importance to individuals who hold the prior job offer letter from concerned authorities of the country as the failure of unsuccessful Temporary Foreign Worker plan that has been formed by the Prime Minister Stephen Harper to meet the requests of the country’s labour market.

During the year 2002, the Canadian government has accepted the requests of around 100,000 from overseas workers to work in the sector of agriculture and during 2012 it has accepted 330,000 requests, of which most of them have chosen the domain of fast-food. On looking at this, CIC (Citizenship and Immigration Canada) Minister Chris Alexander promulgated that they would accept about 260,000 to 285,000 applications in 2015. The number of request that the county’s government is going to accept in 2015 is more than that of the previous year’s figure.

As per the Harper government, temporary foreign workers who are entering the country can attain only fewer benefits and rights and are not eligible to apply for permanent residence of the country, with the known fact that most Canadians say no tojobs in fast food chains.

Surge in temporary overseas workers’ count made the Harper government to pay 15% less salaries for the individuals from Philippines and Latin America. But the labor union of the country blasted the employers saying they were hiring low-paid overseas workers.

As a result of this, the country’s government has decided to suspend the Temporary Foreign Worker Program for some period.

Reportedly, the Canadian government has launched the new program called express entry to fulfill the immediate requirements of the financial division of the country.