Employers and prospective new immigrants have a new tool to determine whether someone is likely to be eligible to work or study in Canada.
Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC) recently launched an online quiz for aspiring immigrants, temporary workers and students to take.
The tool has recorded more than 100,000 visits in its first three weeks of operation, with the majority of those users being from outside Canada, according to CIC.
The tool asks prospective new Canadians questions such as:
- what is the country of nationality on your passport?
- where do you expect to be when you apply? and
- do you have a family member who is a Canadian citizen or permanent resident?
Twitter lit up with people perplexed with the apparent arbitrariness at which some people are able to come to Canada.
One user – @GracieSyle – tweeted multiple times about her various experiments with the new CIC tool. One tweet lamented that she was unable to get into Canada as an employed person from the U.K. but that she could as an unemployed student from Cambodia who had not applied to any universities in Canada.
Others, such as @Lazinrider, learned that he could qualify for a skilled worker program if he was a Ugandan welder applying to get into Canada from Afghanistan.
“This tool makes it easier for potential immigrants and visitors to understand the immigration process,” said CIC minister Jason Kenney.
“At this rate, we can expect more than one million users to benefit from the website by this time next year.”
Glen Korstrom
Twitter: GlenKorstrom