Canada is fast-emerging as the top destination for India?s IT talent. Highly skilled IT specialists such as software engineers, information system analysts, computer programmers and designers are some of the top IT positions for which Canada is rolling out job offers and permanent residency status to foreign workers and most noticeably Indians.
Canada?s Express Entry programme extends invitation to top ranked candidates through a point-based immigration review system and offers permanent residency to qualified individuals. Through this scheme, Canada has already sent as many as 86,022 invitations in 2017 out of which 36,210 (42%) were to Indian citizens. The total number of invitations sent has also seen a 2X increase from the previous year where it was 33,782.
What is interesting to note here is that the number of invites sent to Indian citizens was just 11,037 in 2016 and this number has now seen an increase by 200% in just one year.
The year-end 2017 report on the Express Entry programme which was released recently by Canada?s immigration department reveals that more than one lakh applications were received for permanent residency under this programme in 2017. As many as 86,022 invitations were sent and 65,401 permanent residents along with their families were admitted to Canada. Out of this number, 40% or 26,000-plus Indians ended up becoming permanent residents in Canada.
As per a report by the CATO Institute, there is a 151 years wait for Indian H-1B visa holders to get a Green Card. There are more than three lakh Indians in the United States who are waiting for their green cards and the huge backlog in the processing of their applications is leading to an influx of Indian tech talent to Canada.