Atlantic Canada must do more to retain foreign students, says Canada’s Immigration Minister

Ahmed Hussen, Canada’s Immigration Minister, speaking at the Atlantic Leaders’ Summit, said that Atlantic Canada — provinces of New Brunswick, Newfoundland and Labrador, Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island — should do more to retain international students. He was quoted by the Global News as saying that a recent study conducted by the government shows that only close to 40 percent of talented immigrants who come to Atlantic Canada stay back there. He said that the proportion was very low, and they ought to do better. IRCC (Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada) commenced accepting permanent resident applications from March 2017 for the new Atlantic Immigration Pilot program. The objective of the three-year pilot project is to link up employers with skilled workers and foreign students, thereby increasing the number of immigrants. The region has set itself a goal of attracting 2,000 new workers along with their families into it. Hussen added that they wanted processing to be faster, immigrants integrating well into the communities and retention rates to increase. If these can be achieved there, the same experiment could be replicated in other regions of Canada that face similar problems. Conducted by Corporate Research Associates, the Association of Atlantic Universities commissioned study found that 65 percent of foreign graduates evinced interest in staying on in Atlantic Canada after they graduate. Peter Halpin, executive director of Association of Atlantic Universities, said that only a concerted effort would make them achieve the retention rate. He said that being too small in Atlantic Canada, they could not expect government or universities or employers to come up with solutions to retain not just foreign students, but Canadians from other states as well. If you are planning to migrate to or study in Atlantic Canada, get in touch with Y-Axis, a premier immigration consultancy firm, to apply for an appropriate visa.