New Rules for Students intending to migrate to Canada

Canada introduced a new process called Express Entry this January for international students who graduate from Canadian Universities and Colleges wishing to remain permanently in Canada.
The rules are more stringent and make it more difficult for students to scale through the scrutiny and assessment.

Under the new programme, international students who have graduated from a Canadian institution are placed in a “pool” with other groups of skilled workers and prospective immigrants. Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC) then uses a standardised scoring scheme (the “Comprehensive Ranking System”) to determine which applicants to the pool will receive an Invitation to Apply (ITA) for permanent residency. Those who receive an ITA may then go on to complete the application process via one of several previously established immigration programmes.

There are two significant aspects of this new system for international students intending to apply to remain in Canada after graduation:

• Under the new rules, students will compete with a larger pool of skilled workers for a chance to apply for permanent residency. “Before [Express Entry],” writes The Globe and Mail, “international students did not have to compete with other skilled workers.”
• The Express Entry system effectively establishes an additional step or set of requirements for students who wish to apply for permanent residency. The Canadian Bar Association has said of the new rules, “The Express Entry programme … imposes a new layer of requirements before prospective applicants are ‘invited’ to make an economic class application for Permanent Resident (PR) status. These requirements apply to all applicants in the Federal Skill Worker (FSW), Canadian Experience Class (CEC) and Federal Skilled Trade (FST) Worker classes.”

Express Entry requires students to submit an online profile detailing their basic information as well as their education and employment experience. All profiles are then ranked according to a scoring system that allocates points for each type of qualification or requirement.
The Express Entry scoring system has drawn particular scrutiny from immigration experts and students alike. It looks at English or French proficiency, education, Canadian work experience, and “other factors leading to success in Canada.” Candidates can earn up to 1200 points, with points broken down per section of the online application. Express Entry profiles earn a big boost in scoring if they have either:

• A job offer;
• A provincial or territorial nomination.  Either of these would get them 600 points- halfway to the perfect score of 1200.The Canadian Bar Association comments further on the question of the requirements for arranging employment or a job offer as part of the selection process:
  

  “CIC language leads one to believe that prospective immigrants simply need a job offer to rank highly under the Express Entry programme. This means not just any job offer. To rank highest in the pool of potential immigrants and compete for an Invitation to Apply (ITA), an applicant will need a job offer that has been approved by a federal Labour Market Impact Assessment (LMIA) or supported by provincial government nomination.”

  In simple terms, the need for an LMIA represents a more stringent requirement for international graduates who wish to immigrate to Canada, and it places additional burdens on potential employers. The Canadian Bar Association explains further:
  

  “International students… will now have to obtain LMIAs or provincial nomination to compete for an ITA. This means that international graduates who are not provincially nominated will need to have their entry-level job offers vetted … to assess whether they are displacing Canadians. Employers of new graduates will have to demonstrate that they are prepared to pay international graduates above entry-level wages for the occupation and that their newly acquired skills are in demand in the Canadian labour market.”

  Source: CIC & ICEF