Nova Scotia has launched a new immigration stream that aims to increase access to a fast-track route to permanent residence for international students who have worked in the Canadian province for a year.
Through the pilot programme, the government will be allowed to nominate 1,050 immigrants for the federal government’s new express entry system, which reduces processing times to around six months, up from 700 candidates last year.
“What we’ve heard from the universities and the colleges and the business community is that workers are falling through the cracks”
The announcement follows the creation last year of a skilled worker immigration stream for international students, who Immigration Minister Lena Metlege Diab said would help to fill the quota.
“What we’ve heard from the universities and the colleges and the business community is that [the workers] are falling through the cracks,” Diab commented.
The pilot programme should help to rectify the problem these institutions are seeing, where well-qualified candidates such as international students are not being selected by the federal government for express entry under other provincial streams.
“They had jobs but [companies] couldn’t nominate them through the federal stream.”
The process should help to “restart the flow of student immigrants” into Nova Scotia, after the provincial government scrapped its graduate immigration scheme in 2012, immigration lawyer Elizabeth Wozniak told CBC.
“When the providence shut down international graduate programme, it really left the international grads out in the cold a little bit,” she added. “This really helps them to get permanent residence and stay in Nova Scotia where they want to be.”
In order to qualify for the express entry nomination, potential candidates must demonstrate their eligibility through a points-based system.
They must score at least 67 out of 100 points, awarded for education, language ability, work experience, age, adaptability factors, and whether the candidate has an arranged job offer an employer based in the province.