Canadian Immigration: Indians on biz visa can now stay longer in Canada

Amid the gloom over countries tightening their immigration norms, there’s some good news from Canada for Indian companies. The Canadian business express programme is now being extended to employees of registered companies, who need to stay in Canada for longer periods under the new worker express programme.

The business express programme, which was launched over a year ago in India, benefits large companies registered under it to send workers to Canada on business visa with less paperwork and fast-track visa processing. “We launched this programme first in India and it has been very successful. There are almost 50 companies registered under it, and the Tata Group has already sent over 900 employees to Canada under it.

India, which is Canada’s largest immigration market, is the testing ground for various administrative reform systems and the new global case management is also being launched here first on a pilot basis. “This is a software-driven system for our skilled worker programme which will track the entire immigration history of applicants and will eventually be completely online. It will help us to increase our speed and efficiency in processing papers,” Mr Kenney said.

Canada remains the only country in the world that has not lowered its immigration targets despite global recession. “The mandate to my ministry from our government is to maintain the figures of new immigrants at 0.8% of the total population and not lower it. We do not want to face labour market shortages as the economy enters the growth cycle from the slowdown. India remains our top source country in granting permanent residence, with 32,000 last year,” he said. Canada has also set a target of 2,00,000 temporary workers for 2010.

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The United States largest neighbor, Canada, generates a substantial amount of immigration work for our firm. It is not accidental that many companies with offices around the United States also have offices in Canada. As a result, Ryvin Wallace Group works closely with a number of law firms with whom we co-counsel to assist our clients with Canadian immigration matters.