Canada offering increasing opportunities to young Irish people
July 23 2010 by Liam Clifford
Canada is welcoming an increasing wave of Irish workers on skilled Canadian visas, with the number of temporary immigrants rising from 874 a year in 1999 to 2,604 in 2008.
Canada now sits only behind the UK and Australia for young Irish people
seeking to leave the country's beleaguered economy behind. The number of
registered permanent immigrants from Ireland to Canada also jumped from
158 a year to almost 500 a year between 1999 and 2008.
A Canadian official said that the numbers for 2009 and the first half of
2010 are “much, much higher,” though the actual figures beyond 2008 are
not yet available.
The young people are taking advantage of Canada's strong economy, which
grants 2,500 work-travel visas to young Irish people each year. Prior to
2008, there were annual surpluses of this type of Canadian visa, but they are "very
heavily oversubscribed now," according to one Canada immigration official.
23-year-old Dublin biochemistry graduate, Laura Cross, said her
impending move to Canada is affording her many more opportunities
than she has at home.
"My professors were telling me that there was not going to be any work
out there for a few years and we should just stay in school as long as
we can," she said.
"But I decided to get out there and face the big bad world, and things
are so bad that I just want to get up and get out, get away from all the
difficulty." 
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