erry Christmas and Happy New Year to all our clients, past, present and future, and to your families. Upper Canada Immigration Consultants had a strong year in 2024. We served more clients, in more places, and different places, than in our previous years. We look forward to helping our current and upcoming clients with their visa and permit applications; permanent residency; citizenship applications; entrepreneurship and business opportunities; and with return to Canada issues.
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In the 2025 New Year, we hope to see more of our clients not just on-line, but also in person in the Caribbean, and perhaps in the UK. As well, we will continue our outreach in the countries of the European Union.
Christmas season work hours
Upper Canada Immigration Consultants closed for Christmas holidays at 12:00 noon Eastern Standard Time on Friday December 20th. We will be with our families until the start of business hours on Thursday January 2nd.
During the Christmas and New Year’s holiday period, we will not be working on your files. If you have a time-sensitive application or file, be sure and get us your documents during this final week before Christmas.
After business hours, during weekends, during the Christmas season, and on Canadian statutory holidays, we check e-mail, but may not respond. We will not meet with clients (in person, by phone or on WhatsApp) until the first working day of 2025: Thursday January 2. Please leave a text message here.
ome-care workers arriving in Canada under a new pilot program will be granted permanent residence upon arrival in Canada. The new pilot program was announced in June of 2024 by Canadian Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Marc Miller. It will begin shortly. The new initiative replaces the five-year pilot programs that ran from June 2019 to June 2024 to provide pathways to permanent residence for caregivers. In making the announcement, Miller described the new pilots as “enhanced”, with essentially a one-step to permanent residence for caregivers. Although the full details of the enhanced program have not yet been announced, it is widely anticipated that these initiatives will be less cumbersome and onerous for candidates to come to Canada and achieve permanent residence.
“Caregivers play a critical role in supporting Canadian families, and our programs need to reflect their invaluable contributions. As we work to implement a permanent caregivers program, these two new pilots will not only improve support for caregivers, but also provide families with the quality care they deserve.”
Info on eligibility, work experience, job offers
Click or tap here for much more information on the new programs and evolving changes that affect caregivers already in Canada, and those aspiring to come to Canada;
Call Upper Canada Immigration Consultants by phone or on WhatsApp at (647) 988-3846 to discuss your specific situation.
aregivers and support workers are in demand in Canada. If you are an international student, and you have completed your studies at a recognized, designated learning institution, the information on this web site may open an opportunity for you. If you are outside Canada and have relevant experience and education, you need to read this page. If you graduated within the past five years, and are a Hong Kong resident, there is a clear pathway to permanent residency in Canada for you.
How caregivers and support workers benefit
International students who have completed their studies at a recognized, designated learning institution, may apply for, and may be granted, a post-graduation work permit (PGWP) to work in Canada. You need to be clear on what full-time means, and how to qualify for Express Entry to Canada;
PSW students and caregivers whose post-graduation work permits average between one and two years, can benefit from new policies which lengthen the duration that they can legally accumulate Canadian work experience toward the Canadian Experience Class pathway to permanent residence;
Support workers and caregivers who are temporary residents in Canada (i.e. visitors) and are still in Canada under the temporary public policies enabling them to remain in Canada during the pandemic, and who wish to work as PSWs, will have a new (soon to be implemented pilot program) pathway to permanent residence to take;
Hong Kong residents who are recent graduates have, as of February 8, 2021, an opportunity to obtain open work permits for up to three years under a new public policy from the Government of Canada;
Support workers and caregivers who succeed in obtaining a LMIA-based work permit under the new conditions, after working for six (6) months at a minimum of 30 hours per week, may be eligible to apply for permanent residence for him or herself and their immediate family;
Foreign nationals not in Canada, and trained and experienced support workers, caregivers or nurses working anywhere in the world, can apply for permanent residence through the pilot program, if they have a job offer from a Canadian employer.
If you fall under at least one of the scenarios above, click or tap here for more information about the new opportunities to enable Personal Support Workers to qualify for Express Entry to Canada under recently-changed Canadian government programs and rules.
Ghost consultants are unregistered and unlicensed individuals masquerading as industry experts. They are ignorant of Canadian immigration law, rules, regulations and changing policies . They are usually much more expensive than legitimate and registered consultants, and when they vanish, they leave their victims out of money, out of time, and out of Canada. Beware of them!
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aking news in Canada every few months are cases such as a group of international students from the state of Punjab in India’s north. In that case, more than 700 such students faced deportation from Canada after Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) discovered that Letters of Admission from their education institutions were counterfeit. These fake Letters of Admission, issued in 2018 and 2019 by various institutions, were submitted as evidence in study permit applications on behalf of those students.
At the centre of that case was a now-defunct immigration ‘agency’ operating out of Punjab, whose owner-operator has since vanished. This ghost consultant had been charging aspiring international students thousands of dollars to assist in the process of obtaining admission into colleges in Canada and to apply for study permits. The students (and their parents) all claim to have been innocently duped by the “ghost” consultant who has now ghosted them.
These students, in addition to being fleeced of their family’s cash (apparently all the transactions were in cash) are being deported from Canada for misrepresentation, and also face a ban from applying to IRCC for at least five years. Similar cases include individuals in Canada on a visitor’s permit sent to work for Canadians without a work permit by employment agencies.
If you won’t spend the time and money to do it right, how will you find the time and the money do do it over?
Whether you are in India, the Caribbean, Latin America, Europe or anywhere else, this is a cautionary tale. Its lesson is to stay away from ghosts. Use a real immigration consultant. We get it done right, and ironically, do your work faster and less expensively than the ghosts who vanish with both your money and your dreams. If an offer sounds too good to be true, it probably is. There is more detail on this web site.
The preferred pathway to immigration to Canada is through Express Entry. Draws from among the ‘pool’ of eligible candidates are made regularly. Contact us to get into the Express Entry pool.
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y far, Express Entry is the preferred route to Canada. By the end of 2025, Canada plans to accept some 1.45 million new residents. Canada’s Ministry of Citizenship and Immigration estimates the total breaks down as: 465,000 new residents in 2023; 485,000 in 2024; and 500,000 in 2025. While newcomers to Canada often often gravitate to urban areas, where many have friends and families to provide networking and social supports, the new plan contains numerous initiatives and regional pathways to encourage applicants to settle in Canadian small towns and rural areas. At Upper Canada Immigration Consultants, we assist many clients with getting into the Express Entry ‘pool.’
French-Speaking newcomers
In 2022 Canada received more than 16,300 Francophone newcomers to minority French-speaking communities across Canada. This is a marked increase in numbers from previous years, mostly because of targeted initiatives of both the federal government and provincial governments, (apart from Quebec which has its own immigration program).
All immigrants contribute to the rich tapestry of our cultural and linguistic profile. French-speaking immigrants are no exception. Canada, now in the final year of its five-year Action Plan for official languages, had allocated $40.7 million for Francophone immigration initiatives. To that end, and in setting its sights on improving that record number of French-speaking immigrants of last year, Canada has launched a targeted campaign to attract skilled French-speaking newcomers.
The Government of Canada has no ‘Visa Lottery.’ There is no such program that enables an applicant to ‘win’ a chance at immigration to Canada.
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ome time ago, we were receiving inquiries from individuals all over the globe, and particularly from Africa, about something called a new Canadian Visa Lottery Application that purportedly allows applicants a chance to come to Canada on a permanent resident visa.
I have reviewed the posts and links that people have sent me with Canadian Visa Lottery Application Form 2017/2018 and Canadian Visa Lottery Application Form 2018/2019. This is a scam.
This Canadian Visa Lottery scam is a deliberate attempt to mislead you. It is a fraudulent attempt by certain websites to mislead you, and obtain your personal data, obviously with questionable intent.
Please beware of any posts and websites that tell you there is a chance to ‘win’ permanent residency in Canada through a lottery-type system. The Government of Canada has no such program or initiative.
There are more than 60 programs of the Government of Canadian to facilitate access to Canada, whether for temporary residency, or permanent residency. Additionally, there are special programs, initiatives and pilots that are administered by Canada’s 13 provincial and territorial governments that will allow you, based on their own set of criteria, to legitimately come to Canada.
These, along with a solid and reputable consulting firm like Upper Canada Immigration Consultants, are the only authorities that can provide you a chance to come to Canada. Do not be misled by something that sounds too good to be true, because it likely is just that.
For more information on how you can come legitimately to Canada as a skilled professional, a skilled trade, a visitor, a student, a sponsored family member, or to overcome an immigration hurdle:
ews articles in Canada in the past year have focused on the immigration challenge facing western democracies. Populism and nativism, amplified in volume well beyond the number of their advocates by strident social media and flat-out cyber manipulation by totalitarian nations (who, ironically are among the world’s most xenophobic) make dispassionate and rational discussions of the clear benefits of immigration to a country like Canada more difficult for the necessity of trying to speak clearly and calmly amid the noise of hysteria.
We are all, rightly, most concerned about our own situation, and whether we can succeed. Here is a view of the broader immigration landscape.
As authors, the two Canadians are walking ground opened up by the late Swedish statistician Hans Rosling (1948 – 2017) in the YouTube video of his lecture on global population growth. It is a superb one-hour production. Click below to see it.
Update: Rosling was right
Nothing Ibbitson and Bricker’s book, or Rosling’s video, have to say is all that startling, fact by immutable fact. It is the assembling of the larger picture, and projecting it over the entire globe, and the complete 21st century, that make all the data so eye-opening. In 2007, the number of people, worldwide, living in cities surpassed the number in rural or remote areas. Cities are indisputably the 21st century’s engines of growth and repositories of people and knowledge.
The Globe’s Ibbitson published a July 2020 update here. Ibbitson lists some countries that stand to lose more than half their population by the end of the century. The BBC News web site has an article about the implications of a shrinking population, and why global population shifts may be encouraging news for prospective newcomers to Canada.
Nations that have not pursued forward-thinking immigration programs already see their populations in decline. Examples include Japan, Russia, and countries in eastern Europe;
As populations of youth and people in their prime working years decline or stagnate, proportions of seniors in nearly all western nations are rising sharply. Some 90 percent of health care expenses are spent on the old and the chronically ill. This leaves taxpayer-borne expenses such as health care and pensions to be paid by fewer and fewer working age people;
China, which discourages inbound immigration, will see its own population level off shortly, and begin a long decline;
Urbanization leads to better education for women, with families starting their child-bearing years later, and having fewer children. The birth date falls below the rate of replacement (depending on who calculates it, between 2.2 and 2.7 babies per woman of child-bearing years);
The very policies that welcome newcomers run into opposition in older societies, where a graying older generation can’t – or won’t – connect the dots between a healthy level of immigration, and the people they themselves will need to build their homes, manage their communities, and become their doctors, for example.
Most demographic studies put the world’s population peak at between eight and 11 billion, sometime in the middle of this century, then beginning a steady decline. Canada, with its decades of careful, but generous, immigration numbers remains younger than the average nation. Canada has the ability to keep growing without the looming brick wall of worker shortages facing other nations (such as Japan and even the USA).
Canada’s current 41 million people will grow to some 50 million by mid-century, roughly the end of the lives of North America’s ‘baby boom’ generation born after World War II, between 1946 and 1966. Come and work with us. Each year, some 350,000 people will move from the land of their birth to start a new life in Canada. Competition for each of those spots is tight, and the requirements mean you need to have a plan, act on it, and not make mistakes. Contact us. We can help.
Students can work with us to obtain study permits and TRVs to travel to Canada to begin, or continue, their study programs. Photo by Priscilla Du Preez on Unsplash
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tudents planning to start school in Canada have fewer barriers to travelling than the previous two years. Immigration, Refugees and Citizen Canada (IRCC) has reverted to its usual procedures in issuing study permits by issuing an approval letter and a temporary resident visa (student) for travelling to Canada. Students, upon arrival at a port of entry are subject to an examination by the CBSA, whereupon they can be refused entry, if it is found that information is questionable, or not bona fide. After examining a student and once the officer is satisfied, a secure document, referred to a “study permit” is issued, bearing the issue and expiry dates.
To resume their programs and restore revenue generation mechanisms, educational institutions have developed on-line studies as part of their offering to students, both local and abroad. Recognizing the lengthy processing periods for study permit applications, students must begin their groundwork on obtaining key documents in their respective countries for their applications, months ahead of their semester start dates. And more importantly, students must contact us for assistance as soon as they make a decision that they want to come to Canada to study. We will provide advice, insight and guidance on the process.
Our display ad in Canada’s largest-circulation newspaper, the Toronto Star, ran for the first time on Sunday August 16, 2020.
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uring the Canadian COVID-19 lockdown period, newspapers everywhere found their advertising base drying up. It wasn’t hard to figure out: advertisers were squeezed by their revenue hit during the virus. Newspapers, magazines, radio and TV saw their revenues shrink as retail advertisers cut back on media expenses when their buyers were largely staying home.
Here in the Greater Toronto area in Ontario, Canada’s largest province by both population and economy, our largest newspaper chose to spotlight businesses like ours: small businesses owned and operated by people of colour or persons of indigenous origin by offering selected businesses an opportunity to run a display ad in The Star, for many of them their first print ad in Canada’s largest newspaper.
So, we applied, and were chosen, as one of The Star’s participants. Here is the final product! Click the ad to see a full-size rendering.
Much of our business development activity consists of a virtual outreach using social media. We have our own direct mail list. Folks use it to tell us something about themselves, as a preliminary to asking us if we can help them. And a day after the ad ran, lo and behold, the phone rang. That was nice, and I hope we can help the individuals who started by saying, “I saw your ad in the paper.”
If Upper Canada Immigration has helped you, or you know someone who needs help coming to Canada, click or tap our ad on your computer to get a larger version, then print it and give it to your friend, acquaintance or colleague.
Maybe you are reading this, and thinking you need help with your own citizenship and immigration issue. With COVID-19 cases sharply down in Canada, we may be able to meet in person, and we can certainly do business over the telephone, by WhatsApp, Zoom or Skype. If you use Microsoft Teams, we will meet you there as well.
For individuals
Permanent residency: Is immigration a bigger challenge during the COVID-19 time? You bet it is! But it can be done, and we’ve landed folks in Canada to begin a new life during the COVID-19 months;
Business class: Did you know that Canada is the only country in the world that has free trade agreements with every large economy on earth? If Canada’s access to the world, sound economy, low tax rates, fair and honest business systems could help you serve clients from Canada, maybe we are a fit to help you come to Canada and make your fortune;
Spousal and family sponsorships: Once you are relocated to Canada, how do you get your spouse here? Your children? Your parents and maybe your grandparents? We have done it for clients many times. We know how to do it for you;
Caregivers: Families in Canada need caregivers to look after their kids, parents and grandparents, and family members with disabilities. Good families, and proud Canadians often originate from a caregiver who came to Canada to help other Canadians;
Temporary work permits: Foreign nationals, students and others without status in Canada often need skilled help and advice in gaining landed immigrant status to stay in Canada and build their lives.
mmigration Consultants like me handle issues that change people’s lives. Helping people qualify to come to Canada, and settle here, is a service that is complex, difficult, takes continuous ongoing training on my part, and takes time. That makes it, by definition, expensive. My clients may do this process once in their lives. For most of them, our fees represent an amount of money they don’t hand out daily. We do this work all the time, do it well, and do it correctly.
Andrea Seepersaud’s qualifications
Member: College of Immigration and Citizenship Consultants (CICC) #R515545;
Member: Canadian Association of Professional Immigration Consultants (CAPIC) #R19147;
License: Foreign Worker Recruiter and Immigration Services Act, Province of Saskatchewan #00581;
Commissioner: Affidavits and Oaths, Province of Ontario.
Sometimes, people ask if dealing with a licensed Canadian Immigration Consultant brings with it any form of success ‘guarantee.’ I answer that occasional question on this web site. Click or touch here. There are only about 4,600 licensed Canadian Immigration Consultants, as of the end of 2022. I am one of them. At Upper Canada Immigration Consultants, we stick to the law, treat our clients fairly, and deliver value for money to serious people.
More resources
Click or touch here for more information and FAQs about Upper Canada Immigration and Andrea Seepersaud.
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