P.E.I.'s new population strategy stifling hopes for permanent residency, foreign workers say
CBC
Some foreign workers on P.E.I. say they're frustrated and worried as recent changes to the province's immigration strategy put their chance to get permanent residency at risk.
Monika Dablehar and Hardeep Singh, two friends from India, say they're among many workers in P.E.I. who are now in that position.
"To be very honest, I don't know what I have to do," Dablehar said. "I am not sleeping for whole nights. Whenever I'm at work, I'm always feeling stressed."
Their concerns come after the P.E.I. government announced in February that it's cutting the number of people it nominates for permanent residency by 25 per cent in 2024. It's part of the province's new population strategy that aims to ease a strained health-care system and housing market.
"It was really earth-shattering," Singh said. "The first few nights I couldn't sleep."
He and Dablehar moved to the Island a year ago on open work permits after studying in Ontario, and got jobs at fast food restaurants. Their goal: to get their permanent residency, or PR, and build a life in Canada.
Friends and immigration consultants told them P.E.I. was the best place to get nominated for PR by the provincial government.
Kelly Hamilton, an immigration consultant in Charlottetown, said it used to be a near sure thing.
"It didn't matter whether you were working at McDonald's or Tim Hortons," Hamilton said.
"If you had that full-time permanent job, working your minimum 30 hours a week, met the requirements of the [provincial nominee program], you could put your name in the pool and you could pretty much 100 per cent be guaranteed to get that invitation to make an application.
"Now that's not happening."
As the province reduces the total number of people it nominates for PR, it's focusing the remaining nominations on skilled workers in key sectors like health care, child care and construction.
Sales and service sectors, on the other hand, will see their nominations slashed — from 855 last year to 215 this year.
"We have already made our families and friends here," Singh said. "We don't want to move from here."
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