Archives for May 2004

Q. My wife and I would like to emigrate to Canada as skilled workers. Can we live in Canada while the paperwork for residency is being processed?

Answer: It is possible to reside in Canada while you are in the process of applying for permanent resident status. However, you would be required to obtain the necessary status in Canada as a temporary resident (visitor), foreign student, or foreign worker.

A permanent resident application is not, in itself, grounds for such temporary admission, or for extension of temporary status while within Canada.

Hiring international medical graduates is a key to solving a doctor shortage in Ontario that has reached “unprecedented proportions,” a report by the College of Physicians and Surgeons says.

Over the past five years, the college representing Ontario doctors has registered 800 international medical graduates, but there needs to be more, says the 19-page discussion paper released Thursday.

“Decisive action is needed now to increase the number of physicians in Ontario,” said Dr. Barry Adams, an Ottawa pediatrician and president of the college. “We want to continue to reduce barriers to the recruitment, registration, training and education of doctors in this province.”

Municipalities to contribute to immigration agreement

The federal and Ontario governments have signed a letter of intent to give municipalities a voice as the two senior levels negotiate a new immigration agreement, provincial sources said Thursday.

The sources said Citizenship and Immigration Minister Judy Sgro and her Ontario counterpart, Marie Bountrogianni, signed the letter to recognize what the governments call the urban reality of immigration.

It calls for the establishment of several committees to oversee the negotiations on a Canada-Ontario immigration agreement, including one to develop protocols for municipal participation in the talks.

Visas required of Costa Ricans

In response to a dramatic surge in bogus refugee claimants from Costa Rica, Ottawa has imposed a visa requirement on visitors from Central America’s oldest continuous democracy.

Quebec Immigration Minister Michelle Courchesne announced Thursday an ambitious, three-year plan to slowly increase the number of immigrants to the province by 2007, to better prepare them for the job market and to encourage employers – especially in the regions, outside Montreal – to hire them.

The $35-million strategy follows weeks of National Assembly hearings last December and builds on a similar Quebec government plan in 1990 that has produced mixed results as unemployment among immigrants continues to rise despite the fact they’re arriving here with increasingly higher skills and education levels.

Predicting that immigration will account for all of Quebec’s working-age population growth within 10 years, up from 63 per cent now, Courchesne told reporters in Montreal that the simple reality of demographics and Quebec’s declining birth rate mean planning the future around immigrants is a necessity.

And the key to integrating them is helping them find work, she said.

“If we don’t open the door and give them a first chance, then we haven’t succeeded,” Courchesne said at a downtown Montreal hotel where she met the media as well as representatives of ethnic community groups and other immigration advocates.