Sunday 10 November 2013

Canadian Experience Class & Family Reunification getting tougher

Yesterday CIC changed the rules for the popular Canadian Experience Class program, eliminating 6 occupations from applying for immigration, most notably Cooks & Food Service Supervisors, but also administrative officers; administrative assistants; accounting technicians and bookkeepers; and retail sales supervisors.

In an article written in Chinese, it was revealed that a lot of international students have been flocking into cooking schools, hoping to gain immigration via the CEC program . At the VCC culinary arts program, “currently almost all students are international students from Mainland China”.

In addition to applicant job restrictions, “CIC will maintain the same language criteria for applicants but will verify them upfront as of November 9, 2013″

(anecdote here, on more than 2 occasions when I had dinner in Richmond, I saw the young 20-something waitress/waiter driving off in their respective M3 & 911 GT3. Makes one wonder who should be tipping whom doesn’t it ;))

- People already asking on Chinese forums whether these changes will affect Vancouver RE.
- re: “almost all students at VCC culinary arts program are Chinese”, apparently many people abandoned previous studies/employment in order to take the easy route to immigration.
- it’s a significant change removing cooks, “food services supervisor”, and “admin assistants” from the list of approved occupations, as these require minimal formal training and represent an easier path to immigrate, thus they are experiencing an “oversupply” now.

- it has also been brought up in that the removal of “accounting technicians and bookkeepers” will be a major blow to the Commerce/Economics grads since bookkeeping is the main entry-level job a new grad can do. I can say with confidence that the majority of SFU Economics program are international students from Mainland China (apparently lower English requirement than UBC). It is common practice for businessmen in China/HK/TW to send their kids to Canada to obtain a business degree, for eventual return to Asia to take over their family businesses.

- the removal of “retail sales supervisors” (eg. cashiers in Aberdeen Mall cube stores and clothing stores) also eliminates another popular easy route to immigration
- Looks like CIC is finally catching up to the widely known trends/loopholes to its immigration system

Also, CIC just increased income requirement for family reunification program by 30%, also requiring 3 consecutive years of qualifying income on notice of assessment. Also requires income to meet requirement every year until application’s final approval (couple more years).

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