Immigration Matters

With RNIP, there is no money involved, and some employers don’t get that part.

I can sense a collective sigh of relief from those involved with RNIP, and the newcomers who want to stay and work in centres like North Bay who were hoping the program would become a permanent one.

My response was, why is no one talking about immigration in North Bay when the face of the city is changing before our eyes?

Ontario froze domestic tuition fees for colleges and universities, forcing the schools to rely on international students — often paying three times the tuition fee of a domestic student — and leading Canadore to forge public-private partnerships with colleges in the GTA to change its financial picture

What all this means is local employers will have more difficulty finding part-time workers. They just might have to raise wages to find permanent residents or Canadian citizens to fill the positions

Another item in the news this week is a 40 per cent decline in the number of study permit applications from India in the second half of this year

Over time, as they follow the steps from student, to worker, to permanent resident, we will see 500 people a year becoming permanent residents, or more, if the city’s community recommendation quota is increased

We are a secret no longer. The big players have found us out.

Sudawan Butt, from Thailand, and her family, owners of Le Voyageur Inn in Mattawa, were the winners in the Small Business of the Year category (1-5 employees.) As a finalist in the same category, I was present to applaud their win and chat with them later

'When schools across the country are ranked by study permit totals, Ontario colleges hold 14 of the top 20 spots'