Immigration Minister John McCallum describes Filipino immigrants as “The biggest customers of Canadian immigration”.

McCallum said that improved caregiver stream of the Temporary Foreign Worker Program (TFWP) will better protect workers from abuse. The Federal Government is planning to establish regulated companies that will be responsible for recruiting caregivers and connecting them with Canadian families instead of being hired by a family directly. In such a way caregivers will not depend on one employer who controls their status in Canada. In case there is any problem with a family the caregiver will be relocated to a different one. The Liberal government is expected to introduce this change to TFWP in September.

Canadian system provides fines and penalties for those families who abuse caregivers but future changes will be made in order to enhance protection for foreign workers, in particular caregivers.

Some progress was done in reducing the processing time for reuniting families from the Philippines and a similar drop in processing time has appeared for provincial nominees.

International students

John McCallum also mentioned that it will be easier process for international students as some of the barriers in the immigration system will be reduced. It is believed that there is no need for every immigrant to go through Labour Market Impact Assessment process. Once it streamlined and simple there are more chances to bring in the best and the brightest to power the Canadian economy forward.

McCallum added that Canada welcomed more Filipino immigrants than people from other countries last year. Over 50,000 Filipino immigrants received permanent resident cards, totally 700,000 people from the Philippines. Many of these immigrants came to Canada through the Caregiver Program.

The only thing left is to convince Canadians that it is the right way for Canada to go.