According to a recent survey that was conducted by the World Education Services (WES), most prospective immigrants say that they are more concerned about negative economic impacts in their home country than in Canada.

The economic effect of coronavirus has largely failed to change the intentions of aspirants to immigrate to Canada. More often than not, prospective immigrants still expect Canada to experience less economic hardship than their own country.

Of the 4,615 people who responded to a recent World Education Services (WES) survey, 38 percent say they are more interested in immigrating to Canada now than before, 57 percent say their interest is not influenced by the pandemic and 5 percent claim they are less interested. Researcher Joan Atlin said she was shocked to see such a small proportion of people who were less interested in immigrating to Canada.

WES conducted the survey from April 15-21, in an effort to understand how COVID-19 affected prospective Canadian immigrants’ intentions. They conducted surveys of its customers, most of whom are on the way to migrating to Canada.

At the time the survey was conducted, all respondents were outside of Canada. Many of the survey participants from the Philippines (64%), China (64%), and Nigeria (58%) have reported that they want to immigration to Canada fast because of the COVID-19 situation. For respondents from Pakistan (58 percent), the UK, there was no major effect on the urge to immigrate to Canada (59%), the United States (57%), India (64%) and France (73%).

Well over half of those surveyed, 52%, do not expect COVID-19 to affect their ability to pay the costs of immigration to Canada; but only 35% expect their ability to pay the costs to be negative.

Most report that they would not be influenced by immigration barriers such as increases in IRCC processing times, reductions in immigration targets, or travel restrictions. The risk of contracting COVID-19 was the biggest hurdle with 36% reporting that they would be less interested in immigrating to Canada, but 42% still reported that it would not have a negative effect on their interest.

Our attorneys, as well as seasoned immigration professionals across Canada, opine that the below could be considered as the main reasons why people are now more interested to migrate to Canada than they were before:

1. Provincial governments as well as local self-governments in Canada are now experiencing huge labour shortage. This has caused provinces to issue large number of Notification of Interest (NOIs) to even candidates having less CRS score in the Express Entry pool, provided one of their National Occupation Classification (NOC) code matches with the NOC of at least one occupation in the demand in the province;

2. The Express Entry pool statistics data (made available for public in https://www.canada.ca/en.html) clearly indicates a diminished volume of prospective candidates in all CRS score ranges, across all Express Entry aligned. This has caused candidates who are having less CRS score also to consider immigration seriously at this point of time. Partly, this may also be because they are aware of the upcoming CRS cut-off score trend that many in the immigration industry speculates should come down drastically from this coming July mid onward;

3. Seasoned immigration professionals opine that the cut-off CRS score for Express Entry aligned programs like the Federal Skilled Worker Class (FSWC) should come down drastically from the mid of this coming July. This comes as a great relief for many who had been waiting in the Express Entry pool without an attractive CRS score.