Canada’s new immigration system reveals a different set of priorities—and a different way of thinking about immigration.
The best way to describe Canada’s new application system for skilled immigrants is to compare it to online dating. Foreigners around the world who want to emigrate to Canada fill out online profiles with their age, resume, language skills, education, and much more.
.. Potential immigrants with high rankings are invited to apply for permanent residency. No quotas, no caps, just the federal government skimming off the top every two-to-three weeks. People without enough points to make it to the top of the candidate pool can stay in the database for a year, and employers searching for foreign talent can find them, knowing that they have already been pre-screened by the federal government and therefore can likely have them start working within six months.
.. At one point, Canada banned black immigrants from the United States.) That began to change during the civil rights era and the landmark Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, which opened the United States to more immigrants from non-Western-European countries. Canada passed a similar law in 1962.
.. Skilled workers in the United States are waiting anywhere from five to 11 years to get green cards. Canada is now averaging about six months.