Employers in Brandon, Manitoba, hope the province’s Provincial Nominee Program (PNP) and the promised Rural Community Immigration Pilot (RCIP) will allow them to keep hiring the foreign workers they need to fill jobs.
Brandon was one of the 11 communities that benefitted from the now-closed Rural and Northern Immigration Pilot (RNIP) and one of only two such communities in Manitoba.
Rural and northern communities face unique economic and demographic challenges. However, through the RNIP, rural communities have been able to attract and retain skilled workers that they have needed for years to ensure their economic growth.
In Manitoba, the RNIP succeeded in helping 190 international workers gain their permanent residency in Canada last year.
Then, in the first five months of this year, the latest data from Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) reveals another 160 new permanent residents were welcomed to that Prairie province through the RNIP.
Gerald Cathcart, the director of economic development in Brandon, estimates the RNIP allowed more than 400 foreign nationals to come to Brandon in the past 4.5 years.
He’s hoping Manitoba’s growing allocation under the Manitoba Provincial Nominee Program (MPNP), which reported 7,348 nominations and approvals last year, will allow the community’s employers to build on the RNIP’s success.
In Brandon, the RNIP stopped accepting applications on June 17. The RCIP will kick into gear this autumn.
Employers believe RNIP will provide pathways to permanent residence for newcomers who can help to overcome critical labor job shortages and want to live long term in these smaller communities.”
The RNIP was an employer-led program, suggesting that the RCIP would also be driven by employers. During the announcement earlier this year, the immigration said other elements of the RCIP will take a few more months to work out.
The RCIP is essentially a way for Ottawa to extend the RNIP as the IRCC works on making a rural immigration program permanent. That likely means the RCIP will itself become that permanent program.
The post Manitoba Employers Hoping To Hire Through New Rural Pilot and Provincial Nominee Program appeared first on CI News | Latest Canada Immigration News.
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