UNIT III: EMPLOYMENT (Manpower) and IMMIGRATION

The Canada Employment and Immigration Commission (CEIC) is the federal ministry responsible for three major policy areas related to learning opportunities, needs, and obstacles. These are:

i. immigration policy which determines the selection, admission, and settlement of foreign-born persons wishing to take up residence in Canada. Such persons come under these policies prior to entrance and for the first two years after arrival in Canada. After that, policies related to ethnic, racial or linguistic groups become the concern of the Secretary of State and the individual provinces. Immigrants may continue to come under the policies of CEIC, but only as any Canadian resident would, for the same reasons and under the same conditions.

ii. manpower policy related to job creation; training in occupational skills, basic skills and/or job readiness skills; and counseling information, advice, assistance, and/or referral for those seeking employees and those seeking employment. These are all considered to be economic policies and not social service policies. The Commission normally refers any persons with social problems to other agencies.

iii. unemployment policies related to financial benefits for those who lose their .employment and for those who could find employment if relocated to another geographic area. These are considered primarily as short-term, economic crisis policies, and only secondarily as social service policies.

These three sets of policies have an interdependent relationship. For example, the primary objective of immigration policy is "to support demographic goals as may be established by the Government of Canada ... with respect to the size, rate of growth, structure, and geographic distribution of the Canadian population". Subsidiary to this objective is policy aimed at "the establishment of an equitable system of selecting and admitting immigrants ... based on non-discrimination, humanitarian concerns, and meeting the needs of Canada's labour market". Humanitarian concerns include reuniting families and assisting refugees.

To support these objectives, immigration policy outlines ten selection criteria which are used to determine the admissibility of independent immigrants, nine of which are assessed on a point scale. Prospective immigrants must earn 50 assessment points to be considered for admission. The criteria include: age; knowledge of French and/or English; presence of relatives in Canada; financial ability to maintain self and family until established; two educational factors -- (a) education and training level attained and (b) occupational skill level attained; personal qualities, as assessed at the discretion of the selection officer; and three factors determined by conditions in the area of Canada selected as a destination -- (a) pre-arranged employment or occupational shortages, (b) general occupational shortages, and (c) general employment levels. These last three criteria are determined by Commission officers on the basis of monthly statistics about job vacancies and employment/unemployment rates. The assessed values for each occupation and geographic area are published monthly. Each immigrant must receive at least one assessment point on these factors to be considered eligible for admission. The immigrant is dependent on manpower and unemployment conditions at the time of application for admission.