09/20/2022 New Message Release for International Student New Pathway

On September 22, 2022, IRCC Minister Sean Fraser announced new message about the new immigration pathway for international students. Sean Fraser tabled a "Five-Pillar approach" strategy for this pathway.

As we all know, international post-graduates usually would be granted several year length work permit to work legally in Canada as foreign worker. A few months ago, IRCC announced government would create a new pathway for international students to obtain permanent residency easily. They have been learnt into how the immigration system would help foreign worker and international student with significant local work experience fit in the needs of labour market and speed up their steps to become permanent residence.

The detail of the “Five- Pillars” is released as:

The federal government will use and finish the existing immigration targets which planed in the 2022-2021 Immigration Levels Plan, therefore, Canada is expecting 431,645 newcomer this year. The purpose is to clear up the existing quotas as soon as possible, to gives room for the new 2023-2025 Immigration Levels Plan;
The Express Entry Ranking system will be reviewed and reformed, they would review the scoring function on Canadian education and working experience, language skills, and job offer sectors. Moreover, the system would be changed to flexible to base on an economic goal. New system would probably start in early 2023;
IRCC would apply the new National Occupational Classification (NOC) on November 16. This new system will allow 16 new occupations to become eligible for Express Entry, and remove 3 previously-eligible occupations; IRCC also is working hard into connect economic needs of different level governments, to help immigration candidates would meet the needs of these governments; IRCC also aim to break the barriers for foreign physicians and other medical workers to become permanent residence, who are in high demand;
IRCC would increase the francophone immigration to support the minority community outside Quebec; Add a new municipal Nominee Program to collaborate province and territories to have more flexible pathways to recruit newcomers and meet their labour needs;
IRCC is updating their technology system and modernizing their operation, to increase processing capacity, improving client experience. The intent is to shorten the processing times to allow candidates grant their new status “as soon as possible.”

Announcing these five pillars will help to have a clearer understanding of the general direction of the new pathway. Sean Fraser said the purpose of this new pathway is to help those international students and foreign workers who experienced Canadian labor market to transform to be permanent residence easily, especially in those sectors of currently facing labour shortage.

Recently, each round of invitation in the Express Entry is all categories, that is, non occupation specific. Once the new pathway is implemented, it might be expected that Express Entry system would use some rounds of invitation to invite in-demanded occupation candidates only, which means there will not be as many rounds of non-specific invitation as before. It is possible that the scores for invitations will remain relatively high.

Therefore, once the new pathway is released, it will be easier for candidate who qualify for in-demand occupations to gain permanent residency. But for those without work experience on these occupations, they might need to improve their scores higher to prepare an invitation.