Asian Journal- The Filipino-American Community Newspaper

ON September 18th Darren Silver & Associates in conjunction with CSI Professionals conducted a seminar on Canada immigration at CSI’s offices in Glendale, CA. The seminar received rave reviews and offered a very comprehensive "infomercial" on all things Canadian. On September 26th DSA will again be conducting the same seminar at CSI’s Glendale offices. In addition, in late October DSA will be travelling to the Philippines to conduct seminars on Canada immigration and will also be appearing on a live worldwide telecast to millions of Filipino viewers discussing various Canadian immigration options. Be sure to tell your relatives abroad to catch the show!

For many aspiring immigrants, the negative effects of the worldwide economic meltdown towards their ability to be able to work and or immigrate to greener pastures abroad has been devastating. For example, in the United States, there are scores of temporary H-1B workers that are in danger of running afoul of their status as more and more employers are facing a cash crunch and are forced to let them go. For these displaced workers the only options are either to quickly find another employer or go back home.

However, there is a 3rd relatively unknown option for these and other aspiring skilled workers to be able to realize their dream of a better life. That option is Canada. Canada has been ranked as one of the best places to live by the United Nations numerous times within the past 10 years. Other than its historically lower rates of gun crime and other violence compared to the United States, Canada mirrors its neighbor to the south in almost every other aspect. In fact upon visiting Canada, one will note that it looks like just like any other part of the United States with wide open highways, shopping malls, movie theaters, restaurants, etc. The only real palpable differences is that they use kilometers as opposed to miles, their currency is multi colored, they have a parliamentary system as opposed to our federal system of government and their head of state is the Queen of England as opposed to our President.

Geographically Canada is truly a breathtaking wonder of nature. Second only to Russia, Canada is the largest country in the world with mountains in the western region to low lying plains in the eastern part of the country with fresh water lakes [Canada has the largest supply of fresh water in the world] and some of the most spectacular forested regions one has ever seen in between the two coasts. A majority of the estimated 33,000,000 people of Canada live within 150 miles of the border Canada shares with the United States with a majority of them living in the corridor between Windsor, Ontario [bordering Detroit, Michigan] and Montreal, Canada, i.e. the "401 corridor."

Economically, Canada is one of the trillion dollar class economies. Historically in order to fill the labor shortages that a country of its size encounters, the Canadian government has had to rely on a large influx of new immigrants each year. In 2007, Canada admitted approximately 250,000 new immigrants with similar figures for 2008 and expected for 2009. The majority of those new immigrants arrived in Canada in one of the following categories; family, refugee and asylum, investment and skilled workers. The latter is the focus of the remainder of this article.