Authored by Andy J. Semotiuk, Canadian Immigration Lawyer.
Canada’s new immigration strategy suffers from a familiar Ottawa ailment: it is forever searching for the next good idea while stepping around the obvious one at its feet.
The federal government is now consulting on new priorities for Express Entry in 2027. Among the groups under consideration are U.S. H-1B visa holders, researchers, highly skilled workers connected to the International Talent Attraction Strategy, and specialists in the Global Talent Stream, particularly in artificial intelligence. The consultation runs from August 4 to September 1, 2026.
There is nothing foolish about any of this. Canada should want talented researchers, engineers, physicians and AI specialists. If uncertainty in the United States creates an opportunity to attract exceptional H-1B workers, we should take it.
But there is an awkward question the government has not answered: why is Ottawa so preoccupied with finding skilled workers abroad when so many skilled workers are already here?
That is not a sentimental argument. It is an economic one.
A foreign worker already employed in Canada is not a projection. He or she has a job, an employer, a Canadian earnings record and, often, several years of tax returns. The person has learned how Canadian workplaces function. The family may have children in Canadian schools, a lease or mortgage, a community, a record of paying taxes and using no more public infrastructure tomorrow than it used yesterday.
The overseas candidate may turn out splendidly. But until that person arrives, finds work and settles successfully, much of the case for admission remains a forecast.
The old proverb applies: a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.
More importantly, Ottawa’s own research supports the point. An IRCC study of economic immigrants found that pre-landing Canadian work experience was the strongest predictor of short-term earnings among the selection factors examined and remained important over the medium and longer term. Prior Canadian earnings were an even stronger indicator of subsequent earnings.
In other words, Canada already possesses the evidence it is trying to predict.
Yet the government’s latest Express Entry exercise is focused heavily on whom Canada might attract next, rather than on how it should retain those who have already demonstrated that they can succeed here.
The scale of the omission is not small. According to IRCC’s application-processing data, more than 705,000 permanent-residence applications had not yet been finalized as of May 31, 2026. Some were within normal processing; others were waiting because annual admission space was unavailable. Earlier departmental data placed the permanent-residence processing and prospective inventory at nearly one million people.
At the same time, IRCC reported more than 1.56 million people in Canada holding only work permits as of May 31, alongside hundreds of thousands of study-permit holders. Statistics Canada estimated the total non-permanent-resident population at about 2.56 million on April 1, 2026.
Not every temporary resident should become a permanent resident. A work permit is not, and should not become, an automatic promise of citizenship.
But neither should years of successful residence count for almost nothing.
Canada has spent years educating, training and employing many of these people. Their employers know them. Their communities know them. Their tax records exist. Their children are in school. They are buying groceries, paying rent, contributing to CPP and Employment Insurance and, in many cases, doing the very jobs Ottawa says the country urgently needs filled.
They are not hypothetical immigrants. They are immigrants whose performance Canada has already had the opportunity to observe.
The government itself has partly conceded the argument. Its 2026–2028 immigration plan includes a one-time initiative to transition up to 33,000 work-permit holders to permanent residence. Ottawa says these workers have established roots, pay taxes and contribute to the economy.
Quite so.
But if that reasoning is sound for 33,000 workers, why is it not a larger organizing principle of economic immigration policy?
There is another advantage Ottawa should not overlook. Turning a person who already lives in Canada from a temporary resident into a permanent resident does not create another person needing an apartment, a school desk or a subway seat.
The person was already here.
This distinction matters at a time when the government is trying to reduce the temporary-resident share of the population while also responding to legitimate public concern about housing, health care and infrastructure. IRCC itself has acknowledged that transitioning people already in Canada can reduce uncertainty while easing pressure compared with bringing in additional residents from abroad.
That makes inland selection not only an immigration measure but a population-management measure.
The Ukrainian experience illustrates the point particularly well. Many Ukrainians who arrived under emergency measures after Russia’s invasion found jobs, enrolled their children in Canadian schools and built lives here, but were given no automatic route to permanence. Families that did what Canada asked of them were left wondering whether they could stay, whether their children could afford university, whether they should buy homes, or whether they should start businesses.
As I argued previously in “Canada’s Immigration System Is Quietly Losing Its Balance”, Canada too often educates, employs and integrates temporary residents only to risk losing people whose success has already been demonstrated.
The broader principle extends well beyond Ukrainians. When a person has lived lawfully in Canada for years, worked steadily, paid taxes, demonstrated good character and developed meaningful ties, that record should count heavily in deciding permanent residence.
Canada should therefore adopt an “inland first” principle for a substantial share of economic immigration.
That would not mean closing the door to talent abroad. Canada should continue to recruit exceptional researchers, physicians, engineers, entrepreneurs and specialists whose abilities are genuinely scarce. Nor should Canadian experience become the only factor.
But when two candidates are otherwise comparable, the one already succeeding in Canada should normally have the stronger claim.
Verified Canadian employment should count. Canadian earnings should count. Tax history should count. Employer retention should count. Years of lawful residence should count. Community and family integration should count.
At some point, time invested successfully in Canada must cease to be treated as incidental.
Ottawa should also distinguish more clearly between new arrivals and status conversions when setting immigration levels. A permanent-residence target designed partly to manage population growth should not treat the admission of a new overseas applicant as identical to granting permanent residence to someone who has already lived in Canada for five years.
One adds to the resident population.
The other changes the legal status of someone already in it.
That is not a trivial distinction.
None of this means Canada can grant permanent residence to everyone who wants it. Governments must set priorities. Resources are finite. Immigration programs must preserve public confidence.
But public confidence is not strengthened by a system that appears unable to recognize success when it is standing directly in front of it. So yes, recruit the H-1B engineer in California. Court the AI specialist in Boston. Offer a chair to the distinguished researcher in London. But first look at the engineer in Waterloo whose permit expires next year, the nurse in Halifax who has paid taxes for four years, the tradesman building homes in Alberta, the graduate working in Toronto, and the Ukrainian mother whose children now regard Canada as home.
They are not prospects.
They are evidence.
Canada does not need to stop searching the world for good immigrants. It needs to stop overlooking the good immigrants it already has.
Andy J. Semotiuk is a Forbes contributor whose articles have been read by more than one million people over the last 10 years. He previously worked as a U.N. Correspondent in New York, affiliated with Southam News and other news outlets. For three years, he served on the Tribunal Panel of the Canadian Human Rights Commission. He is currently a Senior Advisor to the Centre for Eastern European Democracy, based in Toronto. Over the past four decades, as a U.S. and Canadian immigration lawyer, he has helped more than 10,000 clients with a range of legal issues. He now practises U.S. and Canadian immigration law with Pace Law Firm in Toronto.
