Canada closes the youth visa program (2009) for Irish travelers.

Young Irish travelers will not be able to come to Canada by applying through the Under 35 Program as the program has been closed until next year as all the allotted two-thousand places have been acquired by interested travelers.

The program allows Irish nationals below the age of thirty-five to live and travel in Canada with a Canadian work permit for a period of up to twelve months with several entries.

The commercial director of the USIT, Dearbhla O’Brien, said that there hasn’t been any sign from the government of Canada as to whether they would open program sometime later in the year 2009, but said that they would begin processing applications for the intake of 2010 from the month of December.

In the meantime, the minister of citizenship, immigration and multiculturalism, Jason Kenney said that there would be no change in the number of permanent Canadian visas issued during the year 2009, provided the global economic downturn does not become extremely damaging.

Kenney said that in spite of the fact that the Canadian economy has been hampered by the economic downturn, there would be no reduction in the number of immigrants allowed into Canada.

Kenney also said that the labor market of Canada is still resilient and there are requirements of hundreds of thousand of overseas workers to fuel the growth of the Canadian economy. He also said that if the downturn becomes extremely worrying then they might look at some modifications to the immigration policy.