Mark Holthe 0:04
Music. This episode of the Canadian immigration podcast is sponsored by the Canadian immigration Institute, one of the best sources of video content on Canadian immigration to help you navigate your way through the Canadian immigration process. Head on over to the YouTube channel, where there's tons of video content, and you can join mark yes myself in a number of live video streams, Q and A's all designed to help you navigate your way through this crazy Canadian immigration process. When you're done there, like and subscribe and then head on over to the Canadian Immigration institute.com where you can find all those awesome DIY courses that I've been talking about. Thank you, Canadian immigration Institute. You are the sponsor of this amazing little podcast. You
music.
Speaker 1 1:05
The Canadian immigration process can be complex and frustrating with the Canadian Immigration Department making it virtually impossible to speak to an officer. There are few places to turn to for trusted information. The Canadian immigration podcast was created to fill this void by offering the latest on immigration law, policy and practice. Please welcome ex immigration officer and Canadian immigration lawyer Mark Holthe as he is joined by industry leaders across Canada sharing insight to help you along your way.
Mark Holthe 1:51
Okay, sorry, guys, we have had a whole host of technical problems, and I can see right now that Alicia that one of the problems that we have is that my little road here, my good mic is not connected, and it's not working. And I don't know why we've got this fancy little video that we've prepared here you guys to talk about these no points for lmias, the removal of job offers and what it means for express entry. And now I have a junky audio that is not connecting properly, and so who knows what it is. Alicia, it's been one of those days. All right, let's see if we can hear you. Can you say something?
Alicia Backman-Beharry 2:30
Oh, hopefully you can hear me. It's running through my computer so we
Mark Holthe 2:34
can hear you. And well, I don't need this anymore, apparently, my fancy mic because you guys are getting the low grade audio, which is ironic because this is supposed to be our Canadian immigration podcast, where the audio is sultry and all nice, and it's built up in such a way that we can't really just shut it off and restart it. Goodness, I've never had so many issues. Yeah, I just don't get why it is no longer picking up my audio. Anyways, you're living the dream here with us, you guys, and we are definitely going to be covering a whole bunch of things that relate to the recent announcement from Minister Miller. And where else do you go for information? Well, you go to minister Miller, who post comments describing his own interview where he commented to whatever paper, in this case, the Financial Post confirming that Canada removes points throughout my amidst immigration fraud. Now we know that this is not yet law. As far as I can tell. It hasn't been brought up or, you know, but Alicia, what are your initial What's your initial take when you see something like this? Yeah,
Alicia Backman-Beharry 3:47
and so we were hoping that this wouldn't happen, because this significantly affects people who have already gone through the process. They've been working in Canada. They finally got their Canadian employer to go through that lengthy Labor Market Impact Assessment process. There's two different types of lmias that could be applicable here. So one would be what's called the dual intent LMIA, where that employer is wanting to continue to employ them on a work permit while they're here, and then is also supporting their PR or it could be just a situation where it's a work permit LMIA, or one where they just said they wanted to support their permanent residents. But in all those scenarios now, immigration or the Minister is projecting or saying that people are not going to be eligible to get those extra points in their Express Entry profiles for that LMIA job offer, and this is a highly technical area, and so we wanted to break it down. One of the resources that is helpful is to look at the regulations and to look at the ministerial instructions. And so there's those are two to change in order for these comments by the Minister to become reality. Okay. And so the first thing is taking a look at, you know, where are we? What's going on with immigration right now, and we know that they are really trying to significantly reduce the number of permanent residents overall targets that they're going to have for 2025 so we know that this is one of the measures that they're probably going to use to just make that pool a smaller pool.
Mark Holthe 5:24
Excellent. All right, I think Alicia, I have figured out how to get my audio working a little bit better. Here. Could you just try yourself and I'll turn my audio up so people can hear Can you just try to shift over to your other audio source and see if that might work? Yes, technical difficulties are always challenging, but once we get this going, you guys are going to have your socks knocked off with all the tremendous insight we're sharing on the impact of Express Entry, let's see, did that work? Let's see, no, we have no audio. Dang Nope. So we're going to work with Alicia. Her the syncing between the audio and the video is a little bit off for her, but I think mine is mine's clear, that's positive, and we'll just work through her computer, and that's just fine. Now remember, as always, Alicia is the source of all great knowledge, and I'm just the presenter of the platform here, so we'll, we'll make sure that you pay attention when she's talking, and we'll work through this. Okay, so those of you who are tuning in just to get everybody up to speed, well, a little bit of technical difficulties initially, but really, what Minister Miller has announced right here, if you're just connecting in, is this removal of points for lmias through the Express Entry System. And that's what's driving our discussion, and it has become a very, very challenging issue for the department, as a result of fraud, as a result of abuse, at least perceived abuse of the program, the inability, I guess, Alicia, of them, to be able to, you Know, to counter the fraud to be able to identify the bad actors and, you know, and in the end, just, you know, punish those who are abusing it and using it for the wrong reasons. And, and so let's just see here. I'm just gonna pull up my notes here and and then what I'd like to start with you guys is just a little bit of a an introduction. And I think most of you are aware that since 2015 express entry has always given bonus points for the purposes of lmias, and the extent to which those points were awarded has not always been the way it is now. And so if we slide over here, and I think, Alicia, we've got your audio working now, if you can say something, yeah, hopefully you can hear me, I can hear you. We'll turn it up a little bit here, and we'll make sure we've got it going good. But you can see here, these are where the how the points are assessed. And there's if you're new to you know, if you're new to immigration, this won't seem weird if you've been around for a while. You see that the government has done some re revamping of how their website looks. And so the comprehensive ranking system, the CRS criteria, are broken down here, and within that criteria, there are bonus points at the end, and they call these additional points. And one of the most important factors for people who are in Canada working, or people that are supported by a job offer that has a foundation in a Labor Market Impact Assessment, is that they're up to 200 points if you're working in really a C suite level position, like a CEO CFO, those kinds of positions, and there are 50 points available for everybody else. That's a tier three or higher. And those points make a huge deal when we're looking at the rounds of invitations. And so let's just pull up the rounds of invitations so that everybody kind of is up to speed. Once again, we've got a new look and feel to this, there was just a draw two days ago. 1085 a PNP, only draw. But when you look at the previous rounds of invitations, individuals who are in these programs, you're getting upwards of if we look here at the Canadian Experience Class, 539 to a large extent, because people have those extra 50 points. And lots of people who are applying to come to Canada through Express Entry, and they're outside of the country, are really out of luck, because they can't compete with individuals that have the extra 50 points for here, and that also have, if we go up to the top here, if they also have the the Canadian work experience points here, which are up to 70 if you have a spouse, and 80 if you are single. And so these points make all the difference when it comes to getting these extra sufficient points to be drawn under a general draw, which, right now we've only seen the Canadian Experience Class. So Alicia, as we talk about this, historically, one of the things that people don't realize is when express entry was first created in January of 2015 there were 600 points attributed to individuals that were in skilled occupations at the time, knock B or higher, now tier three or higher, or tier three to one or lower, maybe that are that had LMIA based work permits and LMIA LMIA based job offers, and so it virtually guaranteed them to get an invitation to apply, just like the nomination does Today. But what happened was they realized very quick that all the food service supervisors were getting all the lmias and the executives who were working at these publicly traded companies were not getting invitations to apply because they're often a little bit older, and they didn't have, although they may have had bachelors or masters, that the age points that they lost were basically making them rank too low to get it as so they then made the changes, which is really the most recent change that we have, and I can't remember exactly when it happened. Maybe it was, I don't know, 2018 or 2019 it seemed like it was pretty quick after maybe it was even 2017 they made changes so that they reduced the number for general kind of arranged employment to 50, and then gave 200 points to compensate for the age and other factors for those working in high level executive positions. And now you know, when it comes to the additional points, there's a real, real issue that we're dealing with here, because they you can see here ranged employment still has 50, but this is what they're looking at removing. Is this 200 at least, as it relates Alicia to the labor market impact assessed based job offers. So maybe you can talk a little bit about some speculation here. So what do we know at least at this stage, what the minister at least means by LMIA points and LMIA based job offers,
Alicia Backman-Beharry 12:09
yeah, so maybe, maybe mark, you can pull up the the instructions. And so there are two sources. So one of them is going to be the regulations themselves. So if we look at the immigration and refugee protection regulations, Section 82 of the regulations, Section 82 sub two talks about arranged employment points, and this is the selection criteria. So this is where we're talking about arranged employment, not for the 50 points, but for the 10 points. So this is where, if you're looking at a Federal Skilled Worker application, historically, or up until now, people would also get points for towards that 67 pass mark for arranged employment. And if we look at the breakdown for arranged employment points, you can see that under sub two we have a few different categories. We've got sub two a, sub 2b sub 2c sub 2d and so immigration has kind of interpreted this. And so if you go to the IRCC website and you look at Federal Skilled Worker selection criteria, arranged employment. So this is Federal Skilled Worker selection criteria, arranged employment. So not just kind of the general one. It gives you a little bit of a summary statement. But there's also one under the under the PD is that talks about, yeah, so this one kind of gives you a little snapshot, so it gives you these situations. And so from these situations, we can tell that those arranged employment points depend on whether the employer has had an LMIA or is getting a new LMIA. Or there's another scenario where you have an employer portal offer. So under the international mobility program, there's some sort of LMIA exempt category, and you're actually have been working for that employer for one year. So if you go to job offer basics, this also gives a summary. You can see that it has to be full time, it can't be seasonal, has to be paid. Then here's where we've got the scenario. So I've also broken this down in the article that I wrote for the Holthe Immigration Law website that talks about, what are the scenarios under which somebody can get those arranged employment points. And we're dealing with it on the front end when we're looking at Federal Skilled Worker eligibility on the selection grid, and we're also dealing it with it, just like Mark showed you the 50 points for the comprehensive ranking score. So same thing in my article. I also break down what are the scenarios. So the ones that seem that they will be going away are the front end. 10 points on the selection factor grid, and also the 50 points for a new LMIA or an existing LMIA where there's a named worker, what we're not sure is going away is hopefully they will retain scenario three, hopefully immigration will not do away with the 50 points for this last scenario, that you are on a high skilled work knock, that you are exempt from needing an LMIA, but you have an employer specific work permit. So it must be an employer specific work permit. Open work permits will not count here. So you can't have a post grad work permit. You can't have an open spousal work permit. Those will never count for this third scenario, arranged employment points. What could count is something like an inter country, inter company transfer work permit, or one of the ones under the free trade agreements, like a free trade professional engineer, for example, if you're moving from one company to a related company in Canada, and the employer has actually submitted that employer portal offer. You have actually obtained a employer specific work permit, and you have worked on that employer specific work permit for one full year, and your employer is giving you a new offer of arranged employment, saying that they can intend to continue to employ you for another year after you get PR. In those circumstances, you might still be able to claim those 50 points.
Mark Holthe 16:33
Perfect. Okay, so in our new world, lots of people are asking, what is the impact of this on my eligibility for express entry? So, like we talked about Alicia, for for the purposes of Express Entry, to get into the pool, you need to meet the eligibility criteria for the Federal Skilled Worker Program, or CEC. In the context of the Federal Skilled Worker Program, as Alicia has alluded to, there are points for job offers that go towards the selection criteria, or being able to get into the pool if you have foreign work experience, work experience, and at this stage, Alicia, we don't know for certain. You know, to what extent the traditional job offer route based on lmias is going to be impacted by the announcement that the minister has so eloquently retweeted out from the summary of his discussion with the Financial Post. Oh man, I hate when he does that. But whatever it is, what it is, and so we're still waiting the official declaration, you know, the background or the information that IRCC puts on their websites. But what is the impact now on the Federal Skilled Worker Program? Does it mean that if you are relying on a job offer to get those 67 points out of 100 that you can't even get into the pool now I just don't know. Or does it purely relate to the the actual selection criteria, and sorry, the comprehensive ranking system and the arranged employment points, we know that these are likely going to disappear. Will it only be for here, or will it actually include these points here? So if these are dropped, then what is the impact, essentially, on the rounds of invitations. So Alicia, if you, if I was to ask you right now and we were to take away these 50 or 100 points, what kind of an impact do you feel it would have on something like these Canadian Experience Class points? So the last round, November 19, for just a CEC straight up draw, the CRS score was 539 so what kind of an impact do you feel it might have for individuals that are in this range?
Alicia Backman-Beharry 18:49
Yeah, so I suspect that at least a few of the people that are at hitting a CRS of 539 actually have those job offer points. They're claiming those 50 arranged employment points, it's it's more rare for people to get those 200 points, because you have to be in that, that C suite, senior executive managerial level. It's not just any senior position, it's like the double zero positions. And so there's probably not too many people that are getting those 200 points, maybe a few, but probably a decent percentage of people would be claiming those arranged employment points of 50. And so this is where we have to wait to see what happens with the ministerial instructions. So maybe Mark can pull up those ministerial instructions. I took a look this morning. I refreshing it. The most recent ones were updated August 9, and so they have not yet been updated. But what I suspect is going to happen is Minister Miller is going to do a new ministerial instruction for express entry, and that's where we see the points break down. So if we pull it up and we look at yeah section, so there you go. You can go over here check the instructions. Enforcement service ninth, where you figure out how the CRS points are getting broken down, is Section 29 sub two. And this talks about the qualifying offer of arranged employment. And you'll see that there's scenario two sub a, two sub B. And so within two sub B, sub i, i That's where we still have those points on that LMIA exempt work permit. So what I suspect will happen is 29 sub two, A and B will disappear, except for that little last section. Hopefully they'll keep that for the imp, but I think probably they will wipe out the points for LMIA based scenarios, and we'll have to see it's easier for them to change these ministerial instructions than it is to change the regulations on the selection grid for those 67 pass marks. So Alicia
Mark Holthe 20:57
with this, we know that these are all built under ministerial instructions. Okay, so what is the difference between something that's built into a ministerial instruction versus something that is an actual regulation within the immigration, refugee protection regulations? What's for the for the viewer who is watching? What's the difference between the two?
Alicia Backman-Beharry 21:17
Yeah, so anything that's a regulation actually needs to be properly passed. It needs to be posted in the Gazette. It needs to be advanced as law, and so written into the immigration and refugee protection act is the ability for the Minister to make certain types of ministerial instructions, and those are much easier for the minister just to pass or to implement, rather, without having to go through the formal process of changing the law, without having to change the regulations. So it's much easier for the Minister to change these ministerial instructions. And I suspect that that is what is going to come probably in the next few days.
Mark Holthe 21:58
Yes, and you can see back historically, there have been quite a few changes, and each of these are documented here. And like I said, I can't remember if I went to, like, November 19, if that was when, you know, they ultimately removed the points for, for, you know, the the 600 points. If I was to type in 600 maximum points for national, no accompanying I'm just looking here to see if I can find the nomination revoked. Yeah, I can't remember if this is when it was or if it was earlier that they had switched the points from 600 down to 50 for those offers of employment. But now we should see one probably, you know, within the week. I have to assume, if he's announcing it already in the newspaper, he's not going to make people wait for three weeks or so till the new year, but we should see instructions in for since December, whatever it might be, maybe it's the 28th or something. I'm pretty sure it wouldn't be, you know, the 25th but 2024 and then we'll know for certain how these actual changes that he was tweeting about are going to be modified. But like Alicia indicated, when it comes to the admissibility of people into the pool and the federal skilled work worker program eligibility, we just don't know, because that is based here in the actual regulations and what is defined as arranged employment and so and the points, and the points attributed to it, which are up to a maximum of 10 in that 67 point threshold. So we'll just have to watch this and see how it plays out. And for sure, we will let you guys know the moment we hear anything about this. So this is kind of, you know, historically, this is, you know, what's, you know, we see hinting. The minister hints at this, but what's this whole issue, Alicia, of fraud and job selling and exploitation? Because that's the exact reason why the minister highlighted the need to just remove this. Was concerns about fraud. So why don't we delve just a little bit into that?
Alicia Backman-Beharry 24:03
Yeah, and so we've heard stories. It's been news media has been reporting on different scenarios where people say that they had to pay for an LMIA. And of course, that's completely illegal, right? So a company, a Canadian company, is the one that ought to be that has to be filing that Labor Market Impact Assessment, and they have to prove that their Canadian employer, they've advertised and recruited. They have to be very specific in how they do so on the national Job Bank and other national news sources, if it's a high skilled job, and they can't find a Canadian and then, only then could that company submit an application and Labor Market Impact Assessment application to ESDC or Service Canada in order to get an LMIA approval. And there's probably, it's probably taking over seven months right now to get a LMIA approved by ESDC, but if they got that back, then people could apply for that work permit, and that work permit would be employer specific. To that employer. What we've been hearing is that there has been fraud. So consultants or agents or somebody has been ghosting these lmias or fake lmias, and telling people that they have to pay in order to get that LMIA. And so keep in mind it's illegal for the company to charge of the worker anything for that LMIA. It's the company's application there's a $1,000 per position application fee that has to be paid directly by the company to ESDC. They cannot recoup that from the employees. So it's 100% illegal for anybody to be paying for an LMIA. But we've heard that that's been happening. And so if that is happening, then it's giving people the ability to work part time, well, full time or part time. It's usually only full time positions that are approved for most lmias. And then they're probably claiming there's arranged employment points to try to get their PR and so if this is a scheme that's been fraudulent, and people are charging 1000s or 10s of 1000s of dollars for these fake lmias or lmias that are not legitimate, then it's going to mess up the entire system, and I 100% agree with Mark that you know, to completely reject the entire system, because All of the people who are doing it properly are now probably out of luck, right? All those people who legitimately cannot find employees to fill the position they've been waiting for seven months for that. LMIA, they did it all properly, and they have an employee that they would really like to keep who's now running out of time on their PGWP, for example, you know it's going to cause it's going to cause people having to go home is going to be the result from that. Yes,
Mark Holthe 26:46
so let's shift just for a second deletion. What I want to talk about now is the impact that this is going to have on individuals. And so what does this mean? Well, the moment we start to reduce the other factors, the additional points that are awarded for different things. And if I go back to the I want to point this out to everybody here, if I can find the criteria page here, these criteria at the bottom. And if you just go to you can find this information by going to express entry the CRS criteria. But if you go to the bottom for the additional points factors here, you will see that over time, things have been added based on what the government felt was a pull factor that would help a person to become more successfully established in Canada. And so when express entry was first launched, there weren't 15 points for a brother or sister in Canada, there were not 50 points for French language, a maximum of 50. The post secondary education was present from the beginning the 15 and 30, I believe. But like we talked about before, there was no distinction. Everybody here who had an LMIA based job offer received 600 points, and then the provincial territorian nomination was 600 points. So each time that these additional points were added as a bonus, the impact it had was directly on the CRS scores required to be granted an ITA, and in almost every case, it caused the minimum CRS scores. And let's go back here. Just give me a second. I've got a bunch of stuff open here. They've got all of these little drop downs now, but if we look at the previous rounds, I'm not going to go back to the beginning of time, but basically what it means is, anyone in this Canadian Experience Class? There was a time, and I think See, this is, this is the full length of Express Entry. Not that I have it all locked in here, but they had general draws. What did they? Used to call them? Now, open draws. I can't remember. No program specified, no program specified draws so and what we saw, there was a time when the lowest CRS score that I saw for those no program specified was 413 points, I believe, and that was a score that was pretty attainable for people who were not even in Canada. And so, because there weren't all these extra points for LMIA based at the time, and this was immediately before the points were added for French and for siblings, it dropped down to 413 points because they were inviting large numbers of people, you know, four or 5000 in a round of invitations. But now with the, you know, with the addition of these other factors here, these additional factors that cause the points to go up. So if we're now removing this right here as a possible option for points, there's only one direction that the CRS scores can go down for, kind of the CEC. Or general draws. It can only go down because there's going to be fewer people. But here's the thing that I want people to understand. The people that are going to be hit the hardest by this news are people that are working in lower skilled jobs, tier three, maybe, maybe tier two that are maybe receiving lower wages because the education required to work in those positions is not as high. And in effect, it's people. And I'm going to go right back to the criteria again to help illustrate this, it's people that have lower human capital scores on the face of it. So usually people that have LMIA based job offers are able to get those extra 50 points to make up the points that they would otherwise lose for having lower education or maybe lower language scores. And so these are the areas right here, or maybe someone is a little bit older and are losing age points. Well, those LMIA based job offers were able to kind of help level the playing field a little bit. So one of the most significant changes right now that's happened is that human core, human capital factors will become more of a an issue, more of a factor. I you know, tongue in cheek with the assessments and the CRS scores that are that are being awarded will be based more on human capital. Now we don't ultimately know if they're going to make more changes to these bonus points. If they're going to say, well, we just don't want international students anymore, so we're going to drop off these points, or maybe, wow, siblings. Who cares about siblings? We're going to drop them off. Each of those, if they were to be removed, would result in the scores going down. But remember right now, part of the reason the scores are so high is because of this factor. Right here. We have so many people in Canada working on Canadian work permits that have gained Canadian work experience, and there's up to 70. Remember, if you're married or you have a spouse, you've got 35 points for the first year of Canadian work experience. It's 40 points if you're single, and that plays a big role. But never before. Well, since the beginning of Express Entry, will human capital play a bigger factor in the assessments? What does it mean for you guys outside of Canada? Well, if you are someone who doesn't have Canadian work experience, some of you are relying on job offers to get those extra 50 points to make you more competitive. Well, you may not have those any longer likely you won't, but if you have, say, good French, or maybe you're still qualifying through French, maybe that's not a good example, if you just have really high human capital. And let me I'll point out one other thing that in my Canadian immigration in my course, one of the things that we have in our course, and I'm just going to scroll down here to the bottom when we get to the breakdown I have in here. I've got too many things going on here. We'll get out of this page. This is the one I want. This has the breakdown of all the individual lessons. So one thing that we did when we were doing this course is in module one right here, learning the basics we created here in lesson four and lesson five, some CRS case scenario, so people could see, you know, through a real life example, how many points you would likely get if you were in certain situations. And in this case here, we broke it down for an individual who has basically three years a foreign work experience is 29 years old, has a CLB of nine. So that's an eight in listening seven in the other abilities for IELTS, or on the Canadian language benchmark for the CELPIP. It's just straight across nines. They have a master's degree, or they have at least two or more credentials, but really a master's degree. So you have those factors, Master's 29 three years of foreign work experience, and CLB nine, you're sitting at 469 points. And so individuals who have higher human capital, it is possible now that you may be able to qualify to receive an ita from outside of Canada with no experience in Canada. But I think in the near term, individuals that have that 40 points or extra 35 points of Canadian Experience Class points are still going to be taking up the lion's share of the spots. Those of you who have French ability, well, that's the great leveler. But if you don't, I think it's still going to be tough as an FSW without Canadian experience. But this is starting to bring you know things down. And what are your thoughts? Alicia, yeah,
Alicia Backman-Beharry 34:58
this is also why I. Think they might keep the imp right. They might keep those arranged employment points in the third scenario, and the reason is because they're saying that they're focusing on probably 40% of permanent residents from Express Entry, being people that have in Canada work experience. And in order to get those 50 arranged employment points under the third scenario, where you're working on a closed, employer specific work permit, you have to have accumulated a full year. And so that's different than the lmias, like you can get those 50 arranged employment points right now for lmias, as long as you're currently working, or if the employer gets a new LMIA and so there's no requirement under the other scenarios to have worked a full year, and so I think, and I hope, that they will keep the third scenario for people who have shown they've put in their time. They've worked that full year in Canada under that closed employer specific work permit, the employer is continuing to support them with that employer portal offer of employment. The employer has to pay $230 and submit that application, they get an A number, and then the applicant submits their work permit. But one thing too, Mark, I have noticed that people are getting confused about how to answer those questions in their Express Entry profile, where it talks about, do you have job offer points? And so I'm hoping that IRCC will make this more clear that if there are going to be changing the regulations and the ministerial instructions, they make it more clear in the portal when you can say yes in those drop downs, because, in my opinion, you can only say yes if you have been working for the full year on the closed work permit and the employer continues to intend to employ you for a year after PR. So you can see on the IRCC website, it says, you know, just having a work permit that's valid is not enough. You actually need to have a new job offer to support that as well. And so this is something where I think people are potentially running the risk of misrep If they do not have a new job offer to support that employment as well. Yeah.
Mark Holthe 37:03
And BH says, you know this? She gives a classic example, or he gives a classic example of a candidate in this third option kind of a world. So excuse me. It says tier zero candidate, ICT one. You're working completed currently in Canada and still working with same employer. Probability of this scenario as an exception to the pros change of points removal and both Alicia and I are kind of on the side that if you are under the international mobility program on an employer specific work permit, with that one year working in Canada for that employer, that that they're going to preserve that at least, that is my that's my feeling, because remember, at the source of all of this is fraud. So they're concerned that people are selling these job offers, and the only way to call this whole market, because as long as people are buying and you guys that are paying for these are just as guilty as the employers and the the agents who are facilitating this, whether it's consultants or, God forbid, lawyers. But the reality is, this is the only thing that the Liberal government feels they can do to curb this, because it's just spiraling out of control. And Alicia and I see it every day in our consultations, and with our solicitor client privilege, we cannot disclose anything that a client is not willing to bring forward, and if someone is paid for their job offer, pretty sure they're not wanting to share that insight, because they're going to be, you know, found to be inadmissible for fraud, and so it's, we've seen all kinds of variations. You guys have heard about it. But the big issue right now is that with the removal of this, individuals that are have lower human capital, who are in certain industries are going to have a much more difficult time securing PR than before, and this is on purpose. So yes, tackling fraud, but I think it also comes down to the government trying to figure out who they really want as candidates. Do they want food service supervisors who are working at one of the franchises, who have a one year post graduate diploma or a two year college program in whatever, maybe Business Administration or something like that, who are scoring normally fairly low points, and with the job offer getting those extra 50 bonus points by really removing those extra 50 points, it reserves more spots for people with the higher education, the higher language ability. So there's a two prong approach to this, and I think it's not just dealing with fraud, but it's also having the ability to kind of cull out, I guess, if you will, lower human capital, folks that otherwise would have qualified. And this was part of the process back in, like I said, 2016 or 2017 when they removed the 600 points for LMIA based job offers for people that were in Skill B, the tier three equivalent at that time, who were dominating the ranks. And let's face it, food service and retail trade and those. Patients. If you were to look at the occupations of individuals qualifying through Express Entry, the general CEC, for sure, is heavily dominated by those positions, and not, you know, I guess should say what's the proper word. It's not surprising that that is where a lot of the LMIA based fraud is obviously there are other things like we look at, you know, administrative assistants, or executive assistants and other positions like that. All of this is fed into the challenges that we're experiencing right now. But those of you who have higher human capital that were feeling, oh my goodness, I'm not getting a chance here, you may now actually have a little bit more of a chance, if you know, because you're no longer going to have to compete against people that have LMIA based work permits for, say, a tier three position. So keep that in mind, as we're kind of assessing this infinite loop says, Have they also finished 200 points for senior execs? So this is, this is kind of the discussion, Alicia, if we have a senior executive who's on an LMIA, right, who is getting those 200 points, you know, is there, is there likely to be a higher rate of fraud for someone claiming a CEO position for a company, an LMIA, that's a, that's a fake job offer, I don't know. Will the 200 go? Will they leave that and just remove the other but right now, it's unclear. And remember, you guys, there has been no regulatory changes or ministerial instructions regarding this. All we have is Minister Miller tweeting a Financial Post article that quotes him, you know, and I guess the select parts that maybe he wanted to be quoted Minister Miller, why the heck do you not just post it? Just post it. Okay, that's my pet peeve. All right, let's jump to a few more questions here. And boy, time is flying fast. We're already 1202, and this isn't intended to be a long one, but let's see. Yawar says, my question is, I'm planning, oh, this is kind of outside, okay, forgive us. Question is, I'm planning to schedule a consult with you. What can I expect? Will it mean I can we go through my documents, reference letter, salary ships and express entry profile? No, you are we answer specific questions within the consult. And then, if you choose to retain us, you can hire us to help you. Yes, we review your applications. Yes, we do a comprehensive assessment. We work with you to put everything together. We even work with you all the way through to submitting your application, but you maintain control over it. Go to our website, check it out. We absolutely love the way we do it. Alicia and I sleep at night. Igor does too, because we know that things are not getting missed when we are focusing on it and you at the same time over zoom screen, share. So go check that out. That's how we do it. There's one other additional question here from LIS she says, Sorry, Alicia, for Scenario three. And this is the job offer three that we were talking about. This is where you're basically have an Imp and international mobility program, work permit that's LMI exempt, and you're trying to claim the job offer points. So how long does the job offer valid to claim points when the company submitted into the portal? I've extended my closed work permit with the company and waiting for an answer. So maybe you can just clarify, just a year, I think is what we're talking about here. But you know, how long does the job offer have to be valid to claim points?
Alicia Backman-Beharry 43:26
So basically, list, just make sure that you've already accumulated a full 52 weeks, right? That you have 52 weeks full time equivalent, so at least 30 hours per week under that closed employer specific work permit. And then when they submit that offer of employment. So when they're doing that new employer portal offer on the renewal, this is where they're now saying we want to continue to employ lists for another year, and hopefully they've put at least a year term. So when they do that employer portal offer, they can decide how long they want to put based on what kind of eligibility criteria. So the length of the term of the new work permit depends on the category that you're applying for. So if you're on an intercompany transfer, you know you have to show that you've worked for that related company within the last three years, usually under the new program manuals. And so as long as they have put at least a year going forward, and they are supporting that with a letter of employment to immigration that says we intend to continue to employ you for another year after PR, then hopefully that will meet the program criteria if they've put a two year term that gives you a little bit of buffer and a little bit of extra breathing space. So longer is usually better, but at least one year after PR is the requirements from the from the ministerial instructions.
Mark Holthe 44:46
Yes. Okay, so now we know for individuals, CRS is going to be more, even more important, your your your human capital. It's going to be worth more. It's going to be more valuable because it's going to be it's going to. A greater weight compared to if lmias are removed in the 50 points or the 200 are gone. But there's consequences for employers as well. Alicia and I feel really bad for the good guys, for the good you know, the good men and women who employ people fairly, who treat them well, who have, you know, businesses that are really they care about their workers, who pay them fairly, who abide by Employment Standards legislation, who, you know, who give them time off when they're supposed to, who don't make them work more hours and not pay them over time, who don't pay them and then say, I want this much money written on the pay slip in cash sent back to me, or individuals who who employ people in a completely fake arrangement where they're making up the pay slips and pay stubs because the person paid $70,000 to them to do this whole scam. So but good employers, you know, they're gonna really have trouble leveraging this to keep their foreign workers if their CR scores are a little bit lower, and so there's an impact on them. And obviously we talked about that certain sectors within the certain industries are going to be hit more heavily, where they rely more heavily on LMIA based workers. So it's going to be interesting. We still have a tons and tons of post grad work permit holders in Canada that have open work permits who are not going to be able to extend with lmias, and now with the, you know, less attractive nature of lmias, really, the liberals are saying, we're trying to make it even more incentivizing for you to leave Canada, and that's, that's what they're shooting for. So is it going to increase, you know, is it going to address the fraud? Well, hopefully it does. But boy, once again, like my tweet, it's really throwing the baby out with the bath water. And I wish there was more enforcement,
Alicia Backman-Beharry 46:47
but, I mean, it's also killing a few birds with one stone, because we've got LMIA processing times that are off the charts right now. Like, yes, ESDC says it's like something ridiculous, like 60 days processing, business days before, days, business days. Yeah, it's not. It's like six to seven months, basically, for an LMIA so, you know, if people stop filing lmias applications, they're going to lose the processing fees. But now that backlog is hopefully going to come down. And I think too mark, they're saying, Well, you know, if, if employers are really serious about paying and we know that they've also changed all the LMIA rules, right? You have to have that 20% uplift if you want to be meeting the wage brackets for high wage. And even in that scenario, we see still that the unemployment numbers are high. And so I think it helps kill that bird with the stone too, and say, You know what? There's Canadians out there and companies who may have wanted to keep their permanent resident employees. Unfortunately, if that permanent resident employee is not a superstar like if they don't have human capital off the charts, they're super young and they're super educated, they've got perfect language scores, then I think the Canadian government is really saying, you know, give that job to a Canadian instead. Yes, and when
Mark Holthe 48:08
this isn't the first time this has happened, you guys. So back in 2014 when the Conservatives were in power, Jason Kenney was the minister over the temporary foreign worker program, essentially, and he had made some comments in the news about some CBC go public articles where Canadians, young people, were complaining that they weren't getting jobs at McDonald's and other fast food franchises because they were being given to foreign nationals. And at the time, where employers were applying for these lmias, it was easy to show that you couldn't find a Canadian to do a full time position with your company, because most of the individuals filling these roles were students, whether they're, you know, high school students or or university, they'd have class during the day. And so it wasn't difficult to post a full time position that you know, you couldn't find a Canadian or permanent resident to fill, but there was such an over reliance on it that Minister Kenny, at the time, indicated that businesses were actually building their hiring strategy around the temporary foreign worker program. Flash forward to today. So the liberals were elected in 2015 and then they started to soften a lot of these rules. Now, with that being said, one of the big failures of all of this has been the inability of the temporary foreign worker program to be able to police and properly vet applications, to not allow it to happen in the first place. And there was, you know, Reddit posts, and there's anonymous, you know, yes, DC employees reporting to newspapers talking about the fact that in some cases, they felt their hands were tied, and they couldn't dig into applications as deeply as they wanted to, because they just didn't have time to process. And the backlogs and the pressure to just turn these things around. And so all of this has contributed to the problems that we're seeing right now. And you know, is it going to open up jobs now for Canadians? And permanent residents. This is another goal that they're looking at. But you know, when I look at the overall numbers of LMIA based work permit holders in say, let's target the fast food industry, I have to assume that still, the majority are post grad work permit holders on open work permits, and it's heartbreaking to see what some employers do to these individuals. They do not pay them more than the absolute minimum wage because they don't have to. And does it have downward pressure on the wages in the industry? Yes, it does. And employers that are not good and don't treat their workers well and and pay them like just really not even survival wages have an economic advantage over other businesses that do try to pay fair wages and and literally put them out of business, and so the fraudsters succeed where the good businesses close down. And I know that's an oversimplification of the issue. And I don't want it to be, you know, you know, I don't want to do that. But we are seeing these types of, these types of issues. So, you know, those are, you know, those are some of the things that we see that are driving this process and why the ministers come out with this. But many of you here, you know, we've got about 460, people that are watching this live. People are saying, well, what are the broader implications? You know, what? What does this mean for me? What should I do as a candidate? What are some of the strategies, or what should I now focus on if this is maybe not an option anymore? Well, we had a question here. I'll pull up to kind of lead into this from Sumesh. He says, Does the LMIA points, at least the removal of points for LMIA job offers. Does that affect PNP applications? I'm working for a company in BC, and the company is ready to give a BC PNP. I can still get the PNP points right. So Alicia, what are your thoughts on that question? Yeah.
Alicia Backman-Beharry 51:54
So this is something we see all the time that people have there's job offer requirements under various Provincial Nominee programs, and that is not the same as what we're talking about with arranged employment points and job offers for Federal Express Entry, but those two systems do dovetail. So Sumesh, if they take away those bonus points for LMIA, for CRS scores, it should not affect your if you get a PNP nomination, that your 600 points should still be there. However, what Mark and I have been seeing is people who book consults and they say, Well, I don't like my employer, or I want to switch jobs. Can I now do that after I've already got my provincial nomination? And that's where you run into a danger zone, because most of the Provincial Nominee programs have very specific employer criteria. They want to make sure that that employer has usually done some sort of employer declaration form, that they are have been in business for a certain number of years, that they have certain financial net revenue targets, that they have proper business licenses. And usually the PNP has to make sure that that's an eligible employer for the PNP stream that you applied for. And so if you switch employers that runs into a danger zone of maybe that PNP is going to actually withdraw their nomination, because also, employers have an obligation to notify the PNPs if they're no longer employing that employee. And I'm also noticing this under the rural renewal stream, that different communities and this is going to be the same for these new Francophone community immigration class and the rural community immigration class. The the designated communities now are starting to implement processes with like memorandum memorandums of understanding that say, Hey, if your employee leaves, you have an obligation to notify us, and that may result in us withdrawing your community designation support letter. And so just make sure that if you're in a PNP that's employer based where you had to have a job offer, make sure that all of that maintains, maintains validity for eligibility, and also that you maintain your temporary residence status. Because the big problem is, even if you're not getting LMIA based job offer points for Federal Express Entry, almost all of the PNP programs require you to maintain your valid temporary status, and usually your ability to work if it's a job offer. So that might mean that you still need your employer to go through that LMIA process if it's taking a long time to get your PR and you don't have another way to get an extended work permit. So just be careful with that
Mark Holthe 54:34
Absolutely. There's a bunch of a bunch of different questions. I'm just going to pull up. Yousef, he just posted this, and I couldn't help this is a real question that people are asking, and I think for us who are involved in the industry, this is something that there are far greater consequences to doing this than a more measured approach. But Youssef says, Why don't Canadian government just stop the whole immigrant. Process for a couple of years, until those already here get some relief. Illegals are taken out of the country and the economy gets back on track. And believe me, there are some proponents of this, you know, you just close the borders and shut things down and and just deal with the people that you have here. And in some instances, you know what use of saying isn't to just shut down all the immigration programs. What he's saying is, you know, process the people that are here first and don't do anything else and don't bring new people in. And you know, through the pandemic, when the borders were closed, to some extent, that was the reason why minister, then Mendicino created that draw. Was it one? What was it? 76 like, it's all a blur. Now, anyways, the February 13, 2021 draw, where there were 27,332 invitations to apply issued under the Canadian Experience Class. Effectively, everybody that was eligible for CEC, and the lowest score was 75 points. And that's what people were, you know, that's what they thought they needed to do to continue hit these levels plans, and then there's been a, you know, I know that the Conference Board of Canada is doing some longitudinal studies on how well these people in that group fare over the coming years. I have to reach out to them and see how that's doing and maybe invite them to come back and talk about some of the data. But lots of people were very critical of that, because they said, it's not just about numbers. And now I wonder if the Liberal government is maybe feeling that pressure that okay, maybe we need to be more selective with the human capital of the candidates that we're bringing in through Express Entry. And if you look at the regulatory statements, and I can't remember exactly how they defined them, Alicia, but the the Hansard and discussions that went on when express entry was created, it was designed to try to still capture the best and brightest in terms of how they categorized that or how they defined it. So I think we're going back to that stage, the day of having lower skill, kind of lower wage, and still getting PR in Canada, at least through the federal economic programs, is I think that is starting to to wane a little bit unless, of course, you speak French, but, but this is a good segue, because people are now saying, Okay, well, what do we do? Well, there's going to be greater emphasis on PNPs and so CRS is critical. You want to try to maximize your CRS even more. So now higher education is going to be a focus. Higher language scores are going to be a focus, but exploring PNP options is going to be even more important now, which ironically, is at the exact same time that the government has slashed or will slash for 2025 the total overall numbers so you can see where this is going. Okay? The Immigration Department is not your friend right now. They are in full damage control. And if you are expecting the government or the minister or whoever to come and save you, it is not going to happen. Those of you who are industrious while still being honest are going to have opportunities, because you're going to be the people that like I had the consult with the two women yesterday, who are both living in Calgary, and they they they have a an LMIA based work permit, and actually no one has a post grad work permit. The other has disposal open work permit. And the advice I had to give them, even though they were they were talking about a great job with a company for both of them, they were both working for the same company, making okay wages. The advice I had to give them was, you need to consider leaving. This is just a very temporary job. You need to consider going to rural Alberta, and that's what we're going to see more with the development of these new programs, these rural community class that they're creating, as well as the Francophone. This has been one of the pressures is to push people outside of the major centers. So pay attention to that. Alicia, and I can't give you guys all advice on, you know, you know, in a comprehensive way that will capture everybody's situations and everyone's circumstances. That's why people hire us directly to represent them. That's why they book consultations. But generally speaking, if you are looking at the writing on the wall here, the government is trying to push people outside of the larger centers. They're trying to emphasize on people that have higher human capital. And if you are one of those individuals with a work permit that's expiring, they are not going to save you. They want you to leave. And we Canvas these things within our consults. And sometimes, Alicia, I know you do as well as I do. We have to tell people you have no option. You must comply, and you you, you need to leave and leave yourself open the option for things to change and for greater opportunities to come. And if you have not, you guys that are watching this, we're up to about 500 now. If you guys have not listened to our time's up series, go the freak over to our podcast and listen to it when you're traveling to work and back. Watch it on our YouTube channel, because Alicia and I talk about the consequences of choosing to stay past the validity of your work permit, choosing to become illegal. Okay, and it may look, hey, like there's enough crooked employers out there that are willing to pay you cash under the table, but you have no future in Canada, and you will be living survival worse than you would have been living if you had gone home and taken your hopefully, your good, recognized education, your experience. Because if you go under the table, you slide under the radar. You try to go illegal, you are then closing off options to maybe other countries like Canada, the US, New Zealand, Australia, other countries, because Canada has information sharing agreements with them. So keep all of that in context, and I'm just going to jump one more step to employers. Employers need to do the same thing. They as employers, need to step up in Alberta. And if you've got an employer who says, Oh, we're not supporting our workers because we don't feel like filling out that employer attestation form, you know that declaration form and describing our financials and everything, well, employers, you need to get with the program, because if you want your workers to stay in Alberta, you need to be willing to truly support them. And the same thing goes for other provinces. The provinces are looking at employers who actually care about their workers and want them to stay with them and work with them and stay in the province, who are in it for the long haul, not workers that are just constantly flipping and burning employees out because they treat them like garbage and are just using the program to keep them longer because they don't have an ability to extend their work permit for whatever reason. So there's this is so multifaceted. And you know, individuals here that are watching that are wondering, what does the future hold? Consultations really give us an opportunity to really look at all of the ins and outs with you. And you know, there's a link in the description below where you can book consults with us. Yes, it's hard to get in here because we're just about to Christmas time, but I will have spots open, and Igor will have a few spots open, and I look, Alicia is taking some much needed time off. But the reality is, we're here to help, and if you need help filing your applications, we do that. We work with you together collaboratively to do it so that when you submit that one chance that you may have one one chance doesn't end up being you have no more chances. And people book consults with us, Alicia night, very rarely at the onset, for some reason, they feel like we're only here to help when all hell breaks loose and you don't have any options, or you get your application refused. Please don't be that person. Reach out to us in advance and let us help you to do it right the first time, because, man, you just may never get a second chance, and we see it Alicia, for consultants, lawyers watching this. You got any advice for them?
Alicia Backman-Beharry 1:02:47
Well, I mean, I think it's, it's a matter of trying to keep on top of all these changes, because it's every single day. Basically, there's another regulatory impact statement, there's another change in the regs, there's another ministerial change, there's something coming out in the news, and then we have to wait for the fine print to actually be dropped. So make sure to keep on on top of what is happening. There's so many changes with the study permits and provincial attestation letters and the fact that you can't program stack anymore unless you had a legacy application. There's changes with post grad work permits. We're still waiting to see what happens with narrowing who's eligible for the post grad work permits in terms of like spousals. So everything is basically getting axed or changed or tightened up, and it's so important to keep on top of it.
Mark Holthe 1:03:35
Yes, all right, guys, we're gonna wrap it up here. Thank you for tuning in every Wednesday, 10am Mountain Time, we have our live Q and A so we have that just before we went live here. This is going to be episode 156, of our Canadian immigration podcast. We wish that the audio was a little bit better for Alicia. We're not sure what the issues are. Someone said, Alicia needs a new headset. I don't think it is. I think it's her Microsoft I'm a Mac user, but that's a different discussion. Thank you for tuning in. We appreciate your questions. We appreciate your comments. We appreciate you and Alicia and I, our hearts go out to you guys like this, who would have predicted this, when you choose to come to Canada to study, to work, hoping that you have an opportunity for permanent residents, and it's been held out to you as it being a realistic opportunity, and then to have the complete rug pulled out under from underneath you, like we feel for you. It's not just because this is our livelihood, and how we provide for our families is by people hiring us to file their applications. Alicia and I had lots of options with what we wanted to do with our law degrees, and we gravitated to immigration because we felt like it was an opportunity to make a difference in people's lives and to genuinely help people, and, you know, experience the gratitude when, when we do help people accomplish things. But my goodness, Alicia, right now, it is not fun. It's not because you book consults with us and we, you know, we do the very, very best that we can to present all the options. But Alicia and I, we are. Honest in our advice, and we give you advice that you can actually rely upon. And sometimes, after a consultation and talking at length with you, we say, look, there are no feasible options realistically that we see for you. And obviously there's a faint hope that some crazy thing will happen. But generally speaking, for a lot of you, you will need to consider having to go home. And we just hope that our advice that we give, at least you know that you're getting the straight goods, and not just someone who's just trying to scratch another dollar out of you before you end up having to go home. The time's up. Series is there to help. We talk about H and C applications. We talk about refugee applications. We talk about why you shouldn't apply through those programs. We talk about if you are a genuine candidate and it's possible to consider them as an option. We talk about expiring status. We talk about just a whole host of things in this time's up series, and we hope that that will be a benefit to you guys and and you know, at the end of the day, we're just here to try to help. Any last comments Alicia, Before we officially sign off? Well,
Alicia Backman-Beharry 1:06:07
I'm just gonna, you know, wish people a merry Christmas. I think the one ray of hope out of all of this is the fact that there are those two new federal programs. So yes, the rural community immigration class, the Francophone community immigration class, just like Mark said, it's it's all about a legitimate intent and being established in those communities. And I think that's where immigration is trying to push people and so really be be strategic about where you decide to do your degree, where you decide to settle and work with your family, because most of those programs require you to have multiple years of experience in that community and then support from an employer and the community itself. So hopefully there's a ray of hope. And I wish everybody a happy holidays. Yes,
Mark Holthe 1:06:54
absolutely. And I'll just finish off with Tom, thank you so much we are in a very noisy world of social media and the videos that we do, and when we have former clients and those who have booked consults, come on and post comments like this. We really, really appreciate it. And same thing goes for chatania. I also had pulled up one of his comments, but because as we're planning to get you as a consultant for the fee. Is it one time payment? Thank you. Just go to our website and take a look all of the information is there and and we look forward to connecting with you are here who you know has got a bunch of questions as well. And, yeah, we're just here to help. So anything that we can do, that's why we do what we do. Okay, everybody. Thanks so much for tuning in today, and we will see you next Wednesday at 10am mountain time. Take care.
Sponsor 1:07:50
Thank you for listening to the Canadian immigration podcast. Your trusted source for information on Canadian immigration law, policy and practice. If you would like to book a legal consultation, please visit www dot Holthe law.com, you can also find lots more helpful information on our Canadian immigration Institute YouTube channel, where you can join mark on one of his many Canadian immigration live Q and A's See you soon, and all the Best as you navigate this crazy world we call Canadian immigration. You.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
