Nick Noorani Website

A record level of newcomers were admitted to Canada in 2008, citizenship and imimigration minister Jason Kenney announced yesterday to a conference geared toward helping more immigrants land jobs in their professions.
“We welcomed an unprecedented 519,722 newcomers to Canada in 2008, the largest number in Canada’s history,” Kenney said. “This number includes over 247,000 permanent residents, 143,000 temporary foreign workers, and over 79,000 foreign students.”

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Weak economy may mean a rethink of how many newcomers we accept.
Rising unemployment could force the federal government to nudge shut the door on thousands of foreigners looking to make Canada their new home, Immigration Minister Jason Kenney says.
While Ottawa is sticking by its pledge to accept 240,000 to 265,000 permanent residents this year, the worsening economic outlook may prompt the government to rethink that target in the coming months, Kenney said yesterday.
“We don’t want people coming to Canada and facing unemployment. We need to be sensitive to the changing labour market, and if we need to make modifications, we will.”http://www.thestar.com/article/585574

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Sweden could learn a lot from Canada and the UK when it comes to leveraging the power of entrepreneurship to help integrate immigrants, writes Nima Sanandaji of the Captus think tank.
The Swedish welfare state is far from successful when it comes to integrating immigrants into its economy.
Among first generation immigrants from non-industrialized countries, less than half of adults are active in the labour market. Welfare dependency is also nine times higher among this group compared to the rest of society.
High taxes, generous welfare benefits, strong labour unions, and labour market regulations trap people in welfare dependency. This is true even for highly educated and motivated groups of immigrants.

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Wealthier, prospective Canadian citizens will be welcoming moves by Canadian immigration to expand its immigrant investor programme, in an attempt to help the country cope during the economic slump.
Jason Kenney, Canada’s minister of citizenship, immigration and multiculturalism, says the move is intended to benefit the Canadian economy, “the Canadian government will soon announce changes in the immigrant investor programme so that we can leverage it better as a source of capital inflows into the country in these recessionary times. http://www.globalvisas.com/news/canadian_immigration_investor_programme_is_expanded835.html

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Newcomers to Canada are being targeted with financial services tailor-made for them.
Baskar Rao and his wife, Shisma, have lived in Canada for all of two weeks. Their visa applications had almost been forgotten — they applied six years ago from their home in Bangalore, India — but when the opportunity came, the couple knew it was now or never. “We had to take this chance,” Mr. Rao, 35, says. “We didn’t want to be sorry later.”
Despite leaving behind a hot climate, their home, family, friends and well-established careers — he’s a chartered accountant, she’s a software engineer — the Raos admit the culture shock hasn’t been as jolting as they imagined. They stepped off the plane on a Friday and walked into a local Bank of Nova Scotia on Saturday. “Within 24 hours of arriving,” Mr. Rao says, “we had our social security numbers, our credit cards and a bank account.”

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