Canada Immigration Minister to answer work permit issues in India trip

During their six-day trip starting from November 4 to November 10, the ministers are slated to visit New Delhi and Chandigarh.

McCallum and his team recently paid a visit to the Golden Temple in Amritsar, on Saturday. He tweeted, “Visiting the Golden Temple in Punjab was truly a moving experience.”

The ministers will have a chance to interact with the delegated staff about visa processing and view the work in action, talk to those involved with the Canadian Immigrant Integration Program which offers pre-arrival integration information to newcomers coming to Canada, and take part in bilateral meetings to discuss topics of mutual interest.

McCallum today met Minister of State of External Affairs Gen. Vijay Kumar Singh in New Delhi and tweeted it was a"productive meeting".

Official sources from the Government of India told India Blooms that India will speak to McCallum about the over restrictions on the movement of skilled workers in short term duration, which in turn is affecting the Indian IT industry. A topic similar in discussion with the UK Prime Minister Theresa Meyer who is also in the country presently.

NASSCOM, a premier trade association of Indian Information Technologies says Canada is one of the top five markets for Indian IT firms, yielding $18billion revenue.

McCallum will also meet his Indian counterpart Sushma Swaraj, Minister of External Affairs in India along with Kirren Rijju, Minister of State for Home Affairs and representatives of NASSCOM.

Canada’s new plan of introducing short term work permit for 30 days will be discussed by the premiers of both the countries.

Indian IT industry believes, the 30-day limit is “too short a time frame” for the functions that the industry caters to.

Contrarily, NASSCOM, which represents the Indian IT, welcomed Canada’s latest plan to reduce the processing time for visas and work permits from 3-4 weeks to a subsequent 2 weeks only, as part of its “Global Skills Strategy” to lure more foreign talent to the country.

The Labour Market Impact Assessment (LMIA) in Canada impinges the Canadian companies to provide a report on the abilities of a foreign worker to demonstrate certain knowledge that has a shortage in the country. However, getting an exemption from the LMIA is hard as more than 20 percent of the applications get rejected often.

The Indian Trade companies who do businesses with Canada wants a clear picture from McCallum on the LMIA exemption too, as they believe it will be beneficial for Indo-Canadian businesses to work together with skilled workforce.

The immigration scene of Canada changed over the years with Indians topping the list of immigrants in the recent past. Ontario being the hotspot for most Indians, recorded the highest immigration recently.

McCallum will interact with the students of Chandigarh based International School of Business, in a talk, organized by the Canadian Embassy in Chandigarh on November 9, 2016.

(Reporting by Debarati Mukherjee)