Most people with post-graduate work permit don’t meet current threshold, says immigration consultant
The average Comprehensive Ranking System (CRS) score that immigrants need to meet to be eligible for permanent residency in Canada has soared this year, according to a report.
Overall, all draws for the general category since January this year have averaged over 540, CBC reported, citing data from Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC).
"That's terribly high,” said Manan Gupta, a Brampton immigration consultant, in a CBC report. “It's impossible to meet, and it's really rare.”
The CRS is a points-based system that IRCC uses to assess and score immigrants’ profile and rank them in the system. It’s used to assess immigrants’ skills, education, language ability and work experience, among other factors.
Currently, Canada is experiencing labour shortages in a variety of sectors, and that is pushing up the cost of living in the country, according to a previous report.
Immigrants could exit Canada, consultant warns
An increasing number of people are spending tens of thousands of dollars to hire immigration consultants or lawyers so they can bump up their CRS scores and be eligible for permanent residency, said Gupta in the CBC report.
However, because the required score is out of reach for many immigrants, they could end up leaving the country. That could spell more trouble for the economy, said Gupta.
"If these temporary foreign workers suddenly exit the labour market, we don't have people to fill in the same job," he said.
By late 2020, the share of immigrants participating in the labour force surpassed that of the Canadian-born population, according to a previous report from the Royal Bank of Canada (RBC). And in early 2024, the participation rate of immigrants outperformed Canadian-born workers by 2%.
In Quebec, the Conseil du patronat du Québec noted that the province needs immigrants to help fill the more than 150,000 vacant jobs in the province, especially as the province’s population is aging.
The situation, of course, is also bad news for immigrants who have already put in hard work to establish themselves in Canada.
"For someone who has given five to six years of their prime youth to Canada, now they are being told you have to go back home and start fresh. Canada is closing doors on them," Gupta said.
"You don't know what future lies there. It is choosing between a rock and a hard place."
For Canada to hold on to these skilled workers, the federal government must shut down programs that continue to attract students but do not fill the acute labour shortages, Gupta said, according to the CBC report.
"The trust is kind of up in the air right now, because every other week there is a new policy being announced. Every other week there is a Band-Aid approach by the government. That approach needs to come to a full stop.”