Canadian Residency: India Continues to Rank First

Canada welcomes immigrants from around 175 countries every year, and this year, about thirty-five percent of the immigrants that Canada welcomed were significantly from India. Adding to over eighty-five thousand immigrants, India has now become the largest source of immigrants in Canada.

The substantial rise in candidates from India started back in 2015. Then, Indian candidates occupied about 14% of new immigrants. With a majority of Indian immigrants having fluent proficiency in English and strong educational background, it made them easily eligible for the Canadian immigration selection process.

Adding to this, more people who were looking earlier at an H1B visa in the U.S. are now looking at Canada as the alternative as policies tighten up. President Donald Trump has set stringent conditions for granting H1 B visas. On the other hand, Canadian residency is quite easy to get as there are no per-country quotas, Indian nationals who or were living in the United States are now opting to apply for permanent residency in Canada.

The next is China. With about 30,000 immigrants, China occupies nine percent of the new coming population. Although there isn’t much rise in the number of immigrants from China for the past few years, it can probably be due to the upgraded living standards in China or Canada’s high proficiency in English. To gain a Canadian residency, you need English fluency, and that poses a problem since only 10 percent of China’s population knows the language.

The Philippines is the third leading country after China. Around 28,000 immigrants from the Philippines received permanent residency in Canada this year. The rate is declining as Canada is reducing admission under the Caregiver Program, under which the majority of Philippian nationals entered via this program.