Canada encourages immigration even in current financial crisis.

November 28, 2008 by Anup Mittal

Jason Kenney, the minister for immigration said that Canada would maintain its current policy of encouraging immigration in order to meet identified labour shortages in key areas despite the financial crisis prevailing throughout the world.

Kenney, who was interviewed late on Friday in the Ukrainian capital Kiev, said that consultations with provincial governments, labour shortages and industries revealed that immigrants with the right skills were still needed in order to ensure economic growth.

Kenney said that the economic crisis is obviously worrying them a great deal but said that they believe that it would be counterproductive, from an economic point of view, to cut off a labour supply from those sectors of the economy that are still growing by reducing immigration levels.

He said that the government intends to maintain a robust immigration program but they will also monitor the situation closely in order to make sure it is working for Canada and the economy of the country.

The Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism also said that Canada will not be going in the direction of other developed nations like Australia and Britain that are aiming at dramatic cuts in immigration intake.

According to the Canadian Government website, the 2001 census revealed that immigrants accounted for 5.45 million of the total population of just over 29 million.

Kenney said that prospective immigrants filling shortages could include nurses from Philippines, heavy equipment operators from Ukraine or consumer software designers from India.

In its quest of tackling the backlog of more than 830,000 applications and simplifying the system, the government was allowing provinces and individual employers to recruit the workers they needed.

Kenney said that very soon he would be announcing in the parliament regarding the level of immigrants to be accepted in the year 2009. Currently, Canada intakes more than 300,000 applications per year and Prime Minister Stephen Harper, re-elected last month, said that the country needed workers suited to its economic requirements.

Kenney also said that Canada would respect its longstanding commitment towards family reunions while intensifying efforts to hunt out fraud, identify legitimate refugees and keep down burden on the overworked health care system of Canada.

He said that he thinks that the nation is far too sophisticated in trying to identify fraud.

Kenney also said that statistics demonstrate that they have had success in inspecting fraudulent applications, adding that there will always be some people who will get through and that is an ongoing challenge.

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