In a general sense, for a Canadian employer to hire a foreign national to come to Canada on a work permit, an LMIA is required to be completed by the employer. However, IT/Tech professionals have a unique advantage here.

The Canadian employer must have successfully obtained a positive Labor Market Opinion before the employer can hire a foreign national to come to Canada on a work permit. Which means that the employer must first prove that the employer could not find a Canadian citizen or permanent resident to fill the job vacancy for which the employer is planning to recruit the foreign national.

Fortunately, for IT professionals, this can easily be achieved because of the following reasons:

Requirement of specialized skills: IT professionals comes with a variety of skills. The term IT or “Information Technology” itself is a very broad term, and it applies to almost all industries across Canada. For example, a person who works as a server administrator for a bank, and a person who works in the network department of a telecommunications company are both IT professionals, but with completely different job specifications and skills requirement. This provide IT/Tech professionals a lot of flexibility when they look for options to come to Canada on a work permit. Because it is often difficult to find Canadian citizens or permanent residents who meet the accurate requirements of the job for which the employer is looking to hire, it is comparatively easy for employers to obtain positive LMIAs (Labour Market Impact Assessments) for people who are IT/Tech professionals.

Universal nature: Technology is universal. Languages may change from one county to the other, but programming languages do not. Similarly, systems and technology hardly change from one country to the other, unlike banking, healthcare, etc. This mitigates one main risk that bothers many Canadian employers – cultural and/or linguistic differences and its implications in the workplace. Because of this fact, LMIA applications structured for IT/Tech workers are more likely to succeed.

Evolving nature of the IT industry: The IT industry is the world’s fastest growing and evolving industry. Because of this, it is a widely accepted fact that Canadian employers will be required to hire foreign workers to meet the need. This also contributes to knowledge-sharing by the foreign worker to Canadian citizens and/or permanent residents.