A new survey of more than 13,000 potential immigrants shows that interest in moving to Canada remains strong.
The survey was conducted by World Education Services (WES) Canada, a designated provider of Educational Credential Assessments (ECA) for Canadian immigration.
Find out if you qualify for Canadian immigration
In 2020, WES surveyed individuals who had submitted an EI application to better understand the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on their plans to immigrate to Canada.
In August 2021, WES repeated the survey to compare responses and see if the changing pandemic context had an impact on respondents’ motivations to immigrate to Canada.
WE S reports there has been no decrease since 2020 in the number of respondents interested in immigrating to Canada. Nearly 52% of respondents said the pandemic would have no impact on their immigration plans. Nearly 93% said the pandemic would have “no impact” or make them “more interested”.
In the 2021 survey, 33% of respondents said they felt the pandemic would negatively impact the availability of jobs in Canada, compared to 45% who held this view in 2020. Meanwhile, 35% said they thought the pandemic would have a positive impact on job availability, compared to 27% who felt this way in 2020.
Some 58% of respondents indicated that they were more interested in immigrating to Canada due to the ability of the Canadian government and healthcare system to manage the pandemic and care for patients with COVID-19.
Only 21% said the pandemic would delay their plans to immigrate to Canada, down from 35% in 2020.
In contrast, 22% said they were interested in immigrating to a country other than Canada, compared to 13% in 2020.
Respondents suggested that they would still have a strong desire to obtain Canadian permanent resident status even if difficult economic or personal circumstances arose. For example, 74% said an economic recession in Canada would have no impact or increase their interest in obtaining permanent residency. This is an increase from the 69% who responded the same way to this question in 2020.
They also felt more optimistic about job prospects in Canada amid the pandemic compared to prospects in their home country. Some 77% said they felt COVID-19 would have no or positive impact on jobs in their profession or sector, compared to 69% in their home country. Only 23% felt it would have a negative impact, down from 28% who felt it would have a negative impact on jobs in their occupation or sector in Canada in 2020.
Among those considering delaying immigration to Canada, the top three reasons cited are travel restrictions, a significant increase in Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) processing times and a reduction in jobs in their field in Canada.
Canada was looking to welcome an additional 341,000 immigrants in 2020, mostly from the economy class, before the pandemic hit. He imposed travel restrictions to limit the spread of COVID, which reduced new immigrant landings to just 184,000 that year.
Travel restrictions have since been lifted for the most part. However, the pandemic has increased IRCC’s backlog to 1.8 million applicants, which has slowed processing times. Canada’s economy has improved in 2021 and the country currently has its highest ever job vacancy rate with nearly one million jobs available.
In 2021, Canada sought to welcome 401,000 new immigrants and achieved this goal largely by transitioning those in Canada to permanent residency. The Canadian government will announce its new 2022-2024 Immigration Levels Plan by February 14. The plan will outline the number of new immigrants Canada will seek to welcome this year and the categories into which they will fall.
The current plan aims to accommodate 411,000 new immigrants this year, nearly 60% of which are expected to arrive in economy class.
Find out if you qualify for Canadian immigration
© CIC News All rights reserved. Visit CanadaVisa.com to find out about your options for immigrating to Canada.
“Travel aficionado. Twitter scholar. Writer. Extreme coffee guru. Evil pop culture fanatic.”