“Just in time” Immigration system was launched by Ottawa almost five years back. The aim was to impart support to Federal Skilled Program. However, five years later, the system does not relieve the workers under the said program and the processing time also does not seem to be shortening up.
The launching of the system
The Conservative government had introduced the system to remove thousands of applications submitted by skilled immigrants, although it was considered to be a controversial step. The system also had brought in major changes in the eligibility criteria belonging to specific occupations and even the intake of applications was also capped.
The then immigration Minister, Jason Kenney had assured that a decision would be given to an applicant within a period of six to twelve months of submitting their application. And this would include the submissions of application as well as getting an arranged employment.
The need of introducing such a system was felt after looking at the labour shortage of the country and also at the large number of vacancies across various skilled occupations.
The time of processing
The processing time on average is 16 months in Paris to 31 months in Los Angeles, for an application under skilled occupation.
There was a time when people had to wait for as long as 62 months to even 97 months in countries like Pakistan and India.
Just in time plan
Ottawa plans to ensure that it should not take more than six months for the apparition’s diner this category to get processed. Ottawa has a strong plan to roll out “Expression of Interest (EOI)” in 2015 so that employers can get skilled employees sooner than later.”
Failure of “just in time”
There are experts fearing the large number of applications possibly being dealt with rather removed with another bill, which could be introduced any time from now.
When the calculations were made by this summer, more than 23,500 federal skilled worker applications have been waiting to get a decision. However, more than 1200 cases were stalked after the overhauling of the program.
A spokesperson of Citizenship and Immigration says, “If we would not have worked upon the backlog then it would have reached the figure of 800,000, however, this number is 640,000 as of now.”
This is the story of Federal Skilled Worker Program.
The need of the hour
Chris Alexander, Immigration Minister believes that the main challenge for 2014 is provide faster service to the immigrants and visitors coming to Canada. He says that his role would be improved “overall service delivery”. His main focus would be bringing down the backlogs and wait times for various immigration streams so that economy of the country gets boosted.
A faster and more prompt immigration system would not only benefit the immigrants but would also bring large gains to the economy of the country. And therefore, a stronger and quicker system is the need of the hour.