Canada welcomes immigrants, offers financial help

Canada, 23rd August: Canada is a multicultural and immigrant-friendly country, indeed. This has been further strengthened by the fact that Canada immigration department offers financial help for settlement of new immigrants into the society.

The year 2008 saw arrival of 250,000 new immigrants into Canada out of which 37,500 moved to Vancouver while 87,000 settled in Toronto.

The government of Canada has chalked out several programs to help new immigrants integrate successfully in their new homes.

Aptly titled the Immigrant and Settlement and Adaption Program, a special program by CIC (Citizenship and Immigration Canada) has been formulated for immigrants in order to provide information about social, educational, housing, economic, banking and jobs in Canada.

And yet another program named Immigration Loans Program is aimed to protect and provide loans to refugees in Canada and to provide them with costs for travel documents, medical exam and related things before moving to Canada.

Several banks in Canada also offer monetary help to new arrivals in Canada. In a recent bid to help new immigrants financially, BMO(Bank of Montreal) started a new banking service for providing services and products needed by new immigrants in Canada for settling here.

Speaking about the services package, Vice President of Customer Communications and Marketing, BMO, Su McVey reiterated the bank’s commitment towards better integration of new immigrants into Canada by providing help in their day-to-day needs.

The BMO has branches in countries including Hong Kong, Shanghai, Beijing and Guangzhou. It has been providing financial services to new arrivals in Canada for the last 25 years. It offers a plan of free safety deposit box , 0.50 percent bonus on GICs for 1-5 years till 1st September 2010 along with a service of no-fee Air Miles and no-fee cash back options for a BMO MasterCard.

Apart from the financial packages by BMO, the RBC (Royal Bank of Canada) also offers a range of products and services for newcomers in Canada. This includes facility of opening a signature account in the bank without having to pay monthly fee up to a period of six months resulting in a savings of $83.70 and waiving any annual fee of $35 for primary holder of Royal Bank Visa Classic II Card. 

All such services aim to relieve the tensions and problems faced by many immigrants in starting a new life in a new country.