The government of Canada attaches tremendous significance to Francophone immigration because it preserves Canada’s bilingual heritage.
Canada aims to welcome an increased number of French-speaking people to Canada and make sure that there is continuous growth and Francophone communities develop. Canada has also taken a few initiatives to focus on immigrants who are either Bilingual or Francophone.
Express Entry, Canada’s online system, controls the applications of immigrants through several immigration programs. Express Entry was launched in 2015 and has been used to process immigration applications to apply for permanent residence under the immigration programs including FSTP, FSWP, PNP, and CEC.
Candidates need to make sure that they prove their language abilities through the language test results when they create their Express Entry profile. They must demonstrate their language proficiency in any of the two languages: English and French. After submitting their profile, if they qualify they also receive scores based on the Comprehensive Ranking System.
For a candidate to receive a higher score, he should choose the first official language as the one in which he is fluent and comfortable.
IRCC (Immigration, Refugees, and Citizenship Canada) then provides scores to candidates who have attained top scores to apply for permanent residency status.
Is it necessary to have command of the French language?
Those candidates who have shown their command of the French language regardless of their English skills can attain 25 additional points. Those candidates who have a medium knowledge of both French and English have a chance to acquire 50 extra SCG points.
The additional SCG points increase the chance to apply for a permanent residency through Express Entry, for those candidates with French proficiency.
Upcoming changes in Express Entry beneficial for French-speaking candidates
The Canadian government is currently making several changes with the introduction of Bill C-19 and these changes will be reflected in the functioning of the Express Entry system.
Bill C-19 aims to make amendments to the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act (IRPA). The changes will allow the immigration minister to send invitations to the candidates based on specified economic goals.
For instance, Immigration, Refugees, and Citizenship Canada can hold rounds of invitations focusing on individuals having language efficiency in the French language to meet Canadian labor requirements.
Additionally, IRCCs invitation rounds of FSTP (Federal Skilled Trade Program) were called off in December 2020, and CEC was paused in September 2021. These temporary pauses are coming to an end.
The suspensions have reduced the number of ITAs in the Express Entry pool. However, Sean Fraser, immigration minister, has repeatedly stated that the all-program draws will be resuming soon with particular emphasis on the economic immigration programs in July’s first week.
