Canada willing to welcome more immigrants-Kenney

Canada, 13th August: Canada is willing to allow more immigrants to come, live and work here.

However, this decision is directly dependent on the economic results for immigrants arriving in Canada. This was affirmed by Canada immigration minister Jason Kenney.

Immigrants’ must earn equivalent to Canadians—Foreigners coming to work in Canada must be able to earn income almost equivalent to their Canadian counterparts, said Kenney.

Only then can the federal government work towards increasing annual Canada immigration levels, he pointed out.

Keeping in view the figures for the last couple of years, it seems uncertain whether Canadian immigrants are able to make a fairly decent income after immigrating to what they call as a ‘land of dreams’.

Several business groups and provincial governments are urging the government of Canada to let in more and more immigrants.

Kenney said the government has no issues in increasing the immigration levels. And this becomes all the more evident keeping in view the recent launch of public consultations seeking views of Canadians and stakeholders with regard to annual immigration levels as well as the mix of immigration intake.

Double economic immigration—Canada urged—Several experts have been urging Canada to raise the current levels of economic migration from nearly 250,000 to around 400,000 immigrants each year.

Doing so will help in addressing the problem of skills shortage in the near future, the experts suggested.

Reduce income gaps between Canadians and immigrants—Kenney asks--While agreeing to the suggestion of raising the annual intake of immigration, Kenney said the only thing is the inability of immigrants to earn a good income here.

So, the moment economic outcomes of immigrants coming to Canada shows any improvement, Canada will throw open its doors to an increasingly high number of immigrants, Kenney promised in a recent interview.

Decline in jobless rate must—Another issue Kenney says is the high rate of joblessness in Canada. Immigrants coming to Canada face high levels of joblessness. This is equally true for newcomers as well as immigrants living here for some time now, he informed.

He said the unemployment rate among immigrants must go down before the government allows more immigrants to come and work here. And immigrants must possess skills in high demand in Canada.