By Chris Muise
翻译：杨沁

Nova Scotia is home to a great deal of international students, who come from far and wide to study at any one of our numerous post-secondary institutions. But when those talented international students graduate, under the current Provincial Nominee Program, many of those who were not able to find employment in their fields had to go elsewhere. Given the current job market here in the province, that meant that we were sending a lot of talented, entrepreneurial graduates away each year.

“An international graduate had to be employed related to their field…before they could apply for permanent residency,” says Sherry Redden, manager of Business and Workforce Integration at ISANS. “If they have to have a job before they can apply for permanent residency, they have to go where that job is. That often took them outside the province.”

Beginning next year, international students who graduate from a Nova Scotian university or college will have a brand-new route to permanent residency – one that gives them a chance to create new work here at home.

Two new immigration stream pilot programs will be launched on January 1, both designed to spur economic growth in the province – the Entrepreneur Stream, and the International Graduate Entrepreneur Stream – the latter of which is poised to take advantage of the thousands of international students Nova Scotia attracts every year.

“We have 10 universities, and we have about 7,000 international students each year that come to the province,” says Rachel Henderson, the director of Strategic Policy & External Relations at the Nova Scotia Office of Immigration. “As a province, we’re very successful in attracting these graduates, and what we hear from both the graduates and from the universities is that a number of these students want to stay.”

Some of these students manage to find work in their fields here at home, but many aren’t so lucky. Those students might have to take the knowledge and skills they learned here elsewhere in order to become a permanent resident of Canada.

“If they have to have a job before they can apply for permanent residency, they have to go where that job is,” says Redden. “That often took them outside the province.” Read More →