(Washington) Data from Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada shows a steady increase in the number of people from the United States obtaining permanent residency in Canada since 2015.
Posted at 9:39
After a steep drop in applications in 2020 due to the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, the number of US applications accepted reached 11,950 in 2021, the highest number since at least 1980. For comparison, 7,655 applications were accepted in 2015.
So far, the year 2022 also announces a heavy balance sheet as the 3,235 applications approved in the first quarter represent the highest total recorded in the last eight years for a period of three months.
A total of 70,330 applications for permanent residence from the United States have been approved by Canada since the end of 2014, including 5,040 in just five months in 2022.
Americans with progressive opinions do not lack arguments to want to go into exile in the North.
It’s not just the relentless series of mass killings, the draconian attack on abortion rights or the possibility of seeing Donald Trump return to the White House that has Mackenzie Fresquez considering stepping down. settle in Canada.
For her, it is rather the realization that in the United States, a country supposed to admire Abraham Lincoln’s vision of a government of the people, by the people and for the people, she feels completely helpless.
“You just feel hopeless,” says Ms.me Fresquez, 29 years old. She currently lives in the Denver suburb of Lakewood with her husband Isaac.
Both are nature lovers who work as land surveyors in Colorado. Mme Fresquez settled there after leaving her Ohio in hopes of one day starting a family in the shadow of the Rockies.
But sending her children to school in the United States no longer seems like the best idea, she says. And nothing leads him to believe that this will change.
“Even if you elect all the right people — which is difficult enough in such a divided country — it’s the way our government is organized and how it works at the moment,” she laments.
“I just feel like there’s nothing I can do about it. Even if I threw myself fully into activism and managed to convince everyone to vote — I don’t even know if that would change anything, ”the young woman is discouraged.
His adopted state has a long history of killings: Littleton, site of the Columbine High School massacre in 1999, is located nearby, as is Aurora, where a gunman shot dead 12 people during a premiere of movie in a cinema a decade ago.
Since May, three killings have taken place – Buffalo, Uvalde and Highland Park – killing 36 people in two months, including 19 children in an elementary school.
Last year, a friend of Mme Fresquez was in a Boulder grocery store just 20 minutes before a gunman walked in to kill ten people. “It’s things like that that remind me that it can happen anywhere,” she worries.
Many still have in mind the Supreme Court’s decision last month to invalidate the Roe v. Wade decision, handed down in 1973, which had guaranteed for almost 50 years the right of women to obtain a termination of pregnancy in a legal and safe.
Mackenzie Fresquez, whose husband is Hispanic, says she fears the collapse of the separation between state and church in a country where a conservative Supreme Court is trying to radically redraw the social and cultural contours of American society.
Thus, the couple is considering moving to Alberta and obtaining work permits under the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement, which governs the process for some sixty professions.
“There are other precedents that rely on the same kind of case law that they denied in overturning Roe, one of those is interracial marriage,” she observes.
“It might sound a bit extreme, but what if something like that was invalidated? Would our marriage be affected? asks the American.
Jo Kreyling, a video game developer who runs Pillow Fight Games from her home in Virginia with her husband Conrad, admits to actively working to move her small family to Vancouver Island.
The lady wants to have another child, but her family vacations every year in North Carolina, one of two dozen states that have already cracked down on abortion bans in the wake of the Supreme Court ruling.
“If I ever have an ectopic pregnancy in two years, will it be safe for me? she wonders.
“From big elements like Roe vs. Wade to extremely local elements, it all comes down to affecting the very first priority: ‘It’s not safe to raise a family here,'” she slices.
A clear picture of American hysteria surrounding abortion emerged this week in Indiana, where a 10-year-old rape victim became the center of an explosive political clash.
The girl, unable to get an abortion in her own state of Ohio, had to travel to Indiana to undergo the medical procedure, which was described as legal since that state prohibits abortions after 22 weeks of pregnancy except in cases medical emergency.
That apparent compliance, however, hasn’t stopped the Indiana attorney general from swearing to investigate the doctor who treated the 10-year-old victim, nor have some elected officials and far-right media from questioning the veracity of the report. drama.
A complex process
If the idea may seem simple, packing and moving to Canada is much more complex.
Although the federal government has a series of pathways and programs aimed at attracting certain immigration candidates, experts warn that it should be understood that not everyone is eligible.
“Some routes can be used, but not by everyone, and knowing how to go about it takes planning,” says Toronto lawyer Henry Chang of Dentons.
“In Canada, certain skills or qualifications take priority over others. Thus, not everyone can qualify for permanent residency,” says the Canada-United States economic immigration expert.
There are three main categories for people who hope to immigrate permanently to Canada and each of them is framed by strict rules.
Candidates applying to the Skilled Worker Program must meet several criteria in terms of work experience, language proficiency and education before being assessed on a series of factors.
The pass mark is set at 67 out of 100 and allows the applicant to be added to the list of candidates for “Express Entry”. These are then assessed a second time and the top ranked are invited to apply for permanent residency.
Aspiring immigrants with at least one year of recent work experience in Canada, under a valid work permit, may qualify for the Canadian Experience Class and also take advantage of the Express Entry List.
Then, the Skilled Trades Program is reserved for people who have at least two years of recent experience in a variety of trades ranging from factory jobs, on construction sites, to chefs, butchers or the bakers.
Most experts agree that the best strategy for obtaining permanent residency is the long-term one. For example, you can apply for a student visa to obtain a Canadian diploma, which facilitates obtaining a work permit and possibly allows you to apply to the Canadian experience program.