Proposed Guidelines for Canadian Federal Skilled Workers

It was a big disappointment for everyone who was waiting for Canada to re-open its immigrant applications last July when they announced that they had postponed it to January 2013. Aside from this change of date, they also announced new changes were forthcoming.

Here's the list of changes in FSW:

1. Language Proficiency -  minimum language proficiency while maximizing the points

2. Age - points will be lowered to accommodate younger immigrants

3. Work Experience - increased points for Canadian work experience and lowered points for Foreign work experience

4. Employment Offers - will be simplified to fill up vacancies

5. Spousal Language Ability - spouses with language proficiency exam results will be given additional points

Nurses For Canada -- Closed Until Further Notice

Every nurse around the world -- the ones who want to migrate to Canada, that is -- all eagerly anticipated the re-opening of applications last July 2011 by the Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC). And sure enough, the cap was reached in September 20, 2011 -- just shy of three months since July's opening.

Compared to last year, where CIC accepted 1,000 applicants for each NOC category -- including Nurses, they slashed the limit in half for this year. That's a total of 500 applicants for nurses around the world! And with all the nurses sprouting up each year and more wanting to migrate to Canada, it's no wonder that it has reached the cap in a wink of an eye.

Although CIC has stated that it will only accept this amount of applications in 2011, they did also note that if there will be no backlogs in the applications, they could add a couple more before it will again reset in July 2012. For everyone who is hoping that they would change their minds, let's keep our fingers crossed!