What are Quebec's immigration quotas for the next few years?
Quebec's skilled worker program, ARRIMA, is currently accepting declaration of interest applications in its online portal. At the moment, candidates with previous Mon Projet applications are being invited to apply for permanent residence as well as those who possess a validated job offer.
Slowly but surely, we have seen the revival of Quebec's skilled worker program in the last month. However, we will still need to wait for January 2020 to see the ARRIMA program working at full speed.
Québec employers are currently facing a labor shortage, there just aren't enough workers to fill out all the skilled jobs available in the province. Emploi-Québec has estimated that in the period of 2017-2026, more than 1.4 million jobs need to be filled in the province of Québec alone.
We believe the best solution to fill these jobs and keep employers in business would be to increase the skilled workers immigration quotas. Quebec's immigration minister has been cautious and decided to decrease the province's immigration quotas in 2019, in an effort to ensure that the province is selecting the right immigrants for its needs.
Quebec's current immigration plan for the next few years is as follows:
2019: 40,000 new immigrants, 20% fewer than 2018
Quebec immigration has seen a pause in the first half of 2019 as Bill 9 was being contested in court. Now that the program is open, Immigration Québec has mentioned that their plan is to facilitate the integration of newcomers and direct them towards the "francisation" program to help them learn french.
2020: 44,500 new immigrants
2021: 47,500 new immigrants
2022: 52,500 new immigrants
This is still a relatively low quota compared to previous years and experts do not believe that this is sufficient to fill the labor shortage needs of the province.
Economics vs Refugees?
Canada currently welcomes 55% of new immigrants in the economic category (skilled workers) versus 45% of new immigrants coming as refugees or sponsored persons.
The Quebec government hopes to increase the percentage of economic immigrants to 65%, reducing the refugees and sponsored persons to 35%.
