Constant recruitment drive in resource sector

THERE is such a high demand to train oil and gas workers in how to escape ocean helicopter crashes and in other emergency and safety skills that companies such as Perth's ERGT Australia are on a constant recruitment services drive. 

 

It's a reflection of Western Australia's demand for labour, overwhelmingly in the resources sector. A further 6000 people were employed last month as the state easily retained the nation's lowest unemployment rate at 3.8 per cent.

Brett Hartley moved out west from the Gold Coast a year ago looking to fill some holes in his resume as a commercial diver. Within five days he had a job, and has since worked everywhere from the Pilbara town of Karratha to Albany on the south coast.

But he was so impressed after he completed a course in basic offshore emergency training with ERGT that he thought of trying his hand as a trainer.

He applied and got the gig about four weeks ago, partly thanks to the emergency training he had done and his diving skills.

"They harnessed what I'd done and retrained me," he said.

Mr Hartley said it was not always easy to work in resource-related jobs, despite the high demand for workers.

"The higher end of the market, where people need to be extremely skilled, like top-end oil and gas -- you won't walk into it unless you're extremely experienced," he said.

"The bottom end of the market, especially with diving, the smaller operators, you'll find they're turning over a lot of staff. It's an easier get-in."

ERGT managing director Shane Addis estimated that the company took on one or two new trainers a month. "We're in the process of recruiting at the moment, and in fact we're constantly recruiting," Mr Addis said.

It was not easy to find new staff, but it was still better than before the global financial crisis, when people had "unrealistic" expectations. "I think everyone felt they could drive a Haulpak and get paid $150,000 a year, and if they could do that they should be paid similar money for almost any role.

"That's changed. I think people are far more realistic now."

He said the company took advantage of the fact people could live and work in Perth when it sought to recruit new people.

Source  http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/industrial-relations/constant-recruitment-drive-in-resource-sector/story-fn59noo3-1226388101576

Most Australians against Uranium sale to India

The Australian government might have overturned a ban on uranium sale to India but a majority of people in the country still appear opposed to the idea of selling the mineral to New Delhi. In a new survey, a majority of Australians were found to be against the recent Labor party decision of lifting ban on Uranium sale to India with 61% opposing it.

"More than 60% of Australians say they are against 'Australia selling uranium to India', with 39% saying they are 'strongly against'," according to the eight annual Lowy Institute poll 2012.

In December 2011, the Australian Labor Party had overturned a ban on the sale of uranium to India following a heated national conference debate.

The results were published by the Lowy institute Poll after a nationally representative opinion survey of 1,005 Australian adults was done.

Key issues covered in the poll included uranium sale to India, relations with Fiji, the Bali bombings, climate change, the war in Afghanistan, migration services, US Presidential elections, US military bases, and attitudes towards democracy and human rights.

The poll also included questions of migration, a perennially controversial topic.

It revealed that Australians recognised the need for short-term migration to address worker shortages with 62% saying they were in favour of 'the government allowing in extra workers from foreign countries' when 'there are shortages of workers in Australia and companies in Australia cannot find enough skilled workers'.

However, it was found that there was major oppositiion against large-scale foreign investment.

The poll also included several new questions about Australia's image and engagement with the neighbourhood.

It was found that Australians believe it was important to be liked by neighbours, with 68% saying it was 'very important' for 'Australia to be seen in a positive light by people from countries in  region', with another 26% saying it is 'somewhat important'.

They also supported government efforts to communicate with countries in the region.

Over 81% said they were in favour of 'the Australian government funding broadcast services or other programmes to communicate with people from countries in our region, with the aim of improving relations with those countries', with 38% saying they are 'strongly in favour'. In the context of Australia in the Asian Century White Paper, the poll presented Australians with six possible responses from the Australian government 'as the Asian region grows and becomes more significant'.

There is strongest support for doing more to get 'Australia included in Asian political forums' with 37 per cent saying it was 'very important'.

Only 24% said the government should 'increase the number of Australian diplomats sent to Asia, but there was less support for doing 'more to attract Asian investment into Australia' at 16% or increasing 'the number of migrants Australia accepts from Asia' at 13%.

In an open-ended question, on a query of which country 'will be Australia's most important security partner over the next 10 years', 74% of Australians picked the US.

Interestingly, 10% said it will be China, the survey said.

The institute's executive director, Michael Wesley, said the poll gives some indication of what Australians might think about the plan, and shows many people are worried about foreigners buying Australian assets.

"We found that 81% of people we asked are against foreign companies buying Australian farmland," Wesley said.

"Australians continue to be worried about the amount of Chinese investment the government is allowing in - 56% think the government's allowing too much Chinese investment into Australia.

"I think people are well aware that some of the big projects in Australian history like the Snowy Mountains scheme were built using skilled labour, because the labour wasn't available from within the Australian population.

"So they're aware that our prosperity and our progress as a nation does depend on allowing in people with the skills that we need.

"The survey has also found support for Australia's alliance with the United States has reached its highest level since the poll began in 2005. But support for tough action on climate change has continued to fall, with 63% of respondents opposed to the government's carbon tax".

Source  http://www.hindustantimes.com/world-news/Australia/Most-Australians-against-Uranium-sale-to-India/Article1-866178.aspx

Genuine students don't need to fear crackdown on overseas recruitment, says immigration minister

The immigration minister yesterday insisted genuine foreign students have nothing to fear from a crackdown on overseas recruitment.

Damian Green spoke out after university leaders warned that the Government’s student immigration policy is damaging British universities. Universities rely heavily on tuition fees paid by overseas students, whose numbers have edged upwards over the past 15 years.

In a letter to the Prime Minister, the heads of 68 universities attacked policies they claim will deter thousands of genuine foreign students and cost the economy billions.

However Mr Green said: ‘There is no limit on the number of genuine students who can come to the UK and our reforms are not stopping them.

‘But we are determined to prevent the abuse of student visas as part of our plans to get net migration down. Students coming to the UK for over a year are not visitors – numbers affect communities, public services and infrastructure.’

Meanwhile, umbrella group Universities UK admitted a fifth of foreign students remain in Britain once their studies have ended.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2152429/Genuine-students-dont-need-fear-crackdown-overseas-recruitment-says-immigration-minister.html?ito=feeds-newsxml

Canada can’t afford new immigration plan

Statistics confirm that Canada’s current net labour market growth is predominantly dependent on immigration. It appears almost certain that by 2030 Canada will be entirely reliant on immigration for population growth. However, the latest policy pronouncements of Jason Kenney, Minister of Citizenship and Immigration, suggests new obstacles blocking Canada’s future economic successes are in the works. 

Despite some notable improvements in the system under Mr. Kenney, the most recent initiatives are guaranteed to permanently harm our country’s international reputation. Here is why. First, he claims to be repairing the current dysfunctional immigration system, including clearing up the most controversial problem, namely the existing backlog of 300,000 applicants under the Federal Skilled Worker Program.

The Minister’s stated goal is to implement a new system that, by 2018, would feature a “made in Canada” international database of pre-screened, employment credentialled candidates suitable to apply for admission to Canada. Since 2008, the department’s policy objective has been to shift from admitting applicants to Canada without a sponsoring employer and toward an employer-driven immigration program. The direction was right. But now the government is backpedalling on its promises. 

The plan, announced in the recent federal budget, is to vaporize the existing backlog of skilled worker applicants by refusing the majority of applications filed prior to February 2008. Forcing applicants to wait close to 10 years and then implementing retroactive legislation refusing the pending backlog of applicants is the greatest sham in the history of Canadian immigration policy. Close to 300,000 applicants who were all promised that their credentials would be evaluated under previous criteria will now be refused. 

It will occur even though the Federal Court blocked a similar attempt in 2003, when department officials were found to be misleading the standing committee on citizenship and immigration in its attempt to pass legislation that would retroactively wipe out a much smaller inventory. This initiative severely contrasts with the image of an immigration department that vigorously pursues efforts to warn the public against dealing with crooked immigration consultants. 

Canadians should be demanding answers to the following questions: Who is regulating the Harper government? How could the Immigration department claim with credibility that it can build a new skilled worker program with promises to attract the best and brightest to fuel our labour market growth? The government’s history is to blatantly repudiate similar promises. Another issue is the government’s plan for a new system modelled on the programs of Australia and New Zealand, two countries which are not comparable to Canada. New Zealand has a population equal to British Columbia and Australia has a constitutional framework and demographics that are inapplicable to Canada. Australia has immigration levels on par with Canada and a similar points-based immigration system. It also imposes a restrictive English-language requirement and a pre-screening of employment credentials. 

The new skilled-worker program in Canada will likely feature both these elements. But a study by University of Waterloo professor Mikal Skuterud and his Australian co-author, Andrew Clarke, concludes that immigrants to Australia enjoy higher earnings than Canada because there has been a clear shift in source country distribution in Australia toward English-speaking countries. Australia has a national credential recognition program. But in Canada professional credential recognition is an exclusive provincial jurisdiction. 

In New Zealand, the government implemented a national job bank of potential foreign workers where employers can cherry pick the best pre-screened candidates. Embracing an international recruitment model used by a marginal low-population player such as New Zealand makes no sense for Canada‹unless Mr. Kenney intends to become the world’s largest international recruiter of human capital. Since Confederation, immigration in Canada has been a matter of joint responsibility between the federal government and the provinces. Every province and the Yukon Territory has implemented its own immigration programs, in order to promote immigration policies best suited to a province’s particular needs. Mr. Kenney would be well advised to direct department policies toward Canada’s short-term immigration programs and delegate the bulk of its long-term immigration intake and employment credential-related pre-screening programs entirely to the provinces. They, in turn, can implement binding contractual promises and a myriad of financial incentives to ensure settlement. There is ample precedent that such measures succeed in this area. 

As Canada enters a period of economic expansion, Canadian employers are now dependent, more than ever, on the influx of foreign workers in many industries to develop a knowledge-based economy and to maintain their international competitive edge. Immigration is essential in most OECD countries, but especially in Canada, in part to offset demographic developments, including low fertility rates, an aging population, a growing elderly dependency ratio, a shrinking labour force and high out-migration rates. 

Developing nations that were once primarily sources of skilled labour for Canada are now experiencing a boom in their own right that is beginning to increase their attractiveness for highly educated migrants. The current federal immigration system needs fixing. But refusing the current backlog of skilled-worker applicants, the largest in Canada’s history, reneging on the most basic previous contractual promises, and adopting policies largely based on a patchwork of measures from other much less relevant models, is ethically dubious, short sighted and will likely create a program that once again replicates the defects prevalent under previous ministers. Only this time, it will cement our reputation as an unreliable, 

untrustworthy player in the global migration industry, which neither Canadian employers, nor the provinces, can afford. 

Source http://opinion.financialpost.com/2012/04/17/canada-cant-afford-new-immigration-plan/

Canada could face lawsuits if it legislates away immigration backlog

"This is the most significant change in immigration policy in more than a decade."

Changes are designed to shift the skilled migrant category "from one that provides for the passive acceptance of residence applications to one that promotes the active recruitment services of the skilled migrants."

No one wants to see "skilled migrants driving taxis, cleaning offices and cooking hamburgers."

Sound familiar? 

Prime Minister Stephen Harper first spoke of "significant reform of our immigration system" at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland in January. 

On March 7, Immigration Minister Jason Kenney gave a major policy speech to the Economic Club of Canada in Ottawa outlining expected "transformational change" to match migrants with "large and growing labour shortages" across Canada. 

Mr. Kenney said it's necessary to move "from a slow, rigid, and passive immigration system to a fast, flexible, and responsive immigration system." 

But those familiar words written above weren't Mr. Kenney's. They were that of Lianne Dalziel, while she was New Zealand's immigration minister in 2003. 

She was referring to changes in July of that year that saw New Zealand move to an expression-of-interest system in which skilled migrants would be plucked from a pool of prospective applicants. 

It's no wonder Mr. Kenney is echoing her words; he's interested in mirroring her government's actions too. Since his Economic Club speech, Mr. Kenney has talked to national media, setting the table for a year's worth of immigration reforms while constantly citing elements of the immigration systems in New Zealand and Australia as models for Canada. 

Commentators on both sides of the Pacific note the successes those countries have had in tailoring their systems to ensure immigrants get jobs. But some also warn against adopting some parts, such as retroactively changing application criteria to wipe clean a backlog, without learning from the costly lessons these countries have already faced. 

The Pacific model revealed

 

On March 7, Mr. Kenney emphasized what he saw as Canada's burdensome backlog of about one million applications in the skilled migrant and other categories. He pointed out that New Zealand legislated an end to its backlog in 2003 with the start of Ms. Dalziel's policy changes. 

He also noted that Australia started requiring prospective skilled immigrants to get their professional credentials assessed before they arrive onshore, "with very positive results." 

Three weeks later, Mr. Kenney announced he would seek to have foreign skilled workers' education credentials assessed before they arrive in Canada. The next day, the 2012 federal budget proposed wiping away more than 280,000 skilled worker applications filed before February 2008. 

Mr. Kenney has floated other ways Canada could copy from Australia and New Zealand such as by adopting an expression-of-interest system and stricter language requirements, as well as taking their lead in reforming the investor class, and using Australia's balance-of-family test to assess parent and grandparent applications. 

Canada, New Zealand, and Australia share similar immigration trends and already hold similar policies.

Beware of wiping out the backlog

 

In the 1990s, a relatively large number of migrants to New Zealand were without jobs. At the same time, like Canada, New Zealand saw a blooming skilled worker application backlog, rising to 20,000. This led to Ms. Dalziel's 2003 policy changes. 

New Zealand started putting initial applications, known as expressions of interest, meeting a minimum number of points, into a pool; all other applications are scrapped. 

Those in the pool with the most points are invited to apply for residence. The government draws from the pool every couple weeks, using a floating points threshold based on employer needs. The pool is also wiped clean every few months; applicants can re-register. 

The government intends to open the doors to people selected from the pool almost automatically if they have a relevant job offer or have worked or studied before in New Zealand. If not, they are put in a work-to-residence program. 

In moving to this new system, the government estimated that up to 10,000 applicants under the old system would not meet the new criteria so it expected to spend $9 million to refund the fees they paid and stop their applications. 

For this, New Zealand's government felt the wrath of immigration consultants and denied applicants—something Canada could face in doing the same. 

"By creating policies that take effect retroactively, you offer no sense of security to applicants whose basis for deciding whether or not to apply are policies existing at the time of their application," wrote Carolyn Caaway, a resident of the Philippines, in an open letter to Ms. Dalziel posted on the Internet.

In the end, said New Zealand migration expert Richard Bedford, the government phased in the new system while it processed old applications from the backlog. 

"But the backlog wasn't a huge backlog," said Mr. Bedford, a professor at the University of Waikato National Institute of Demographic and Economic Analysis in New Zealand. Canada's backlog is much larger. 

Ms. Dalziel had also previously run up against similar criticisms when her government upped the number of language points applicants needed. They challenged the retroactive change in court, and the immigration department lost. 

The Canadian immigration department lost a similar lawsuit in 2002 after it raised its points pass mark retroactively. 

Now, with Mr. Kenney leaving the option of legislating away the backlog, and already taking steps to halt all skilled worker applications from before 2008, immigration lawyers are gearing up for a fight.

Toronto lawyer Lorne Waldman said earlier this month that more than 100 applicants interested in challenging the skilled worker backlog scrap contacted him. "I'm looking at all the legal issues arising and I expect that we will be taking legal action," he said. 

"I think we're already being sued by people for not processing their applications quickly enough. So, quite frankly, dealing with this [backlog] problem decisively I think will reduce any legal risk that may be posed to the government," said Mr. Kenney, when asked about the potential for lawsuits.

Observers are split on whether Canada should legislate away the backlog. 

"In Australia and New Zealand it's been a very effective mechanism for governments to be able to make changes and not be caught for the 10 years following the policy change in having to continue to select people by the old system," said Lesleyanne Hawthorne, an expert in international skilled migration flows and a professor with the University of Melbourne in Australia. 

Mr. Bedford said he didn't think Canada should legislate away the backlog "because you have huge loss of faith if you do that." 

Expression-of-interest system

 

Mr. Kenney speaking to CBC radio's The Current last month said his government is "looking closely at" the expression-of-interest system New Zealand developed. 

He, however, described the group of initially accepted expressions of interest as "a big resume pool" that candidates would consent for employers—and in Canada's case, provinces—to draw from.

That's not quite how it works in New Zealand, according to Susan Jones, a spokesperson for New Zealand's Department of Labour. While other programs do connect employers with prospective migrants, "employers and third parties do not have access to the Expression of Interest pool," she said. 

In any case, the New Zealand system works well for bureaucrats, said Iain McLeod, a managing partner with a New Zealand immigration consultancy firm. It controls their workflow. But it's essentially a "holding pen," he said. 

"In that pool, you have no rights. If you are never selected, tough luck," he said. 

But Mr. Bedford said the expression-of-interest system is "much fairer on the migrant." It allows prospective applicants to get a decision quickly, and it's more transparent in that they won't be subject to massive retroactive changes. 

Mr. McLeod noted a problem with the Canadian government's desire to move toward the Pacific route of putting applicants with pre-arranged job offer at the head of the line and placing a premium on in-country work or study experience. 

Employers want to see their recruits and know that they are able and have the authority to start within a few weeks. Unless Canada's bureaucracy can work along that timeline, the scheme won't work, he said. 

Canadian observers have also raised fraud concerns. The government would have to ensure employers don't make bogus job offers, or pay migrants lower than they would Canadians doing the same job. 

Changing focus

 

Ms. Hawthorne said if Mr. Kenney wants to make economic migration better connect immigrants with jobs in their fields, his proposed changes patterned after Australia are a good step. 

"I think the items that he is proposing are very likely to increase employment outcomes for economic migrants who come into Canada," she said. 

Canada and Australia both started out with the 'human capital' approach to economic migration, she said. The perception was that people with general work experience should be able to adapt to changing labour-market conditions. 

While Canada stuck with that method, Australia in the last decade focused on whether immigrants were finding jobs fast. 

Australia required principal applicants be pre-screened independently for English-language knowledge. It opened up a path to permanent residency for international students who finished courses there, which Canada followed in 2008. Increasingly, regional governments have more selection power, as in Canada, but also employers, she said. 

In the late 1990s, about 60 per cent of principal applicants to both Canada and Australia had found some form of work within six months of arriving. But with Australia's changes, Ms. Hawthorne noted that its employment outcomes shot up to 83 per cent by about 2002 while Canada's stood still, despite near-identical economic trends. 

"-I think what [Mr. Kenney is] clearly identifying is the key measures that have greatly improved our outcomes," said Ms. Hawthorne. 

While Canada is looking to model elements of Australia's system, Toronto immigration lawyer Mario Bellissimo noted that when Australia implemented reforms in the 1990s, "they really did look from A to Z." Canada should be wary of cherry-picking some reforms over others, he said. 

kshane@embassymag.ca

Movideo migrates video platform to Microsoft's Cloud

Movideo has inked a four-year agreement, including long-term pricing, technical support and sales and marketing backing, to migrate its online video platform to Microsoft's Windows Azure Cloud for its Asia Pacific clients.

Movideo says the shift will allow the company to focus less on the back-end of the business and concentrate on the management and delivery of services for clients. The company was previously running its infrastructure service out of California.

Movideo CEO Tony McGinn said that with Movideo focussed on the Asia Pacific region, housing data centres in countries closer to their clients made sense.

“On that basis, Microsoft has multiple data centres around the world, including one in Hong Kong and Singapore. So being a little bit closer to our focus geographically, that made sense,” McGinn said.

“Secondly, with a multiple data centre strategy with Azure … there’s a lot more robustness and redundancy in the Windows Azure offering, and given that media and entertainment is such an important part of our ecosystem now, we need to be able to offer that to our customers.”

McGinn told Computerworld Australia that Movideo reviewed a number of companies to partner with, but Microsoft was the only company it formally engaged in discussions with.

“That’s not to say that we didn’t do a pretty thorough review of the others, it’s just that we didn’t sit down and go into complex, long-term alliance discussions with them,” he said.

CTO Cameron Moore said the decision to go with Microsoft came down being able to leverage Redmond's platform-as-a-service (PaaS) offering, as opposed to infrastructure-as-a-service.

“Right now we exist in a Cloud environment which has provided us as an infrastructure-as-a service," he said. "That means we have to roll out our own – we roll out as many servers as we want but we have to install the operating system, put the virtual machine [on it], set up our own databases and really apply all the platform services that we need to have a scalable Cloud solution,” he said.

The Azure PaaS Cloud gives Movideo access to the SQL Azure Cloud-based database system and AppFabric, and means that the company can leverage the platform to expedite development, freeing up the company to focus on customer service instead of worrying about maintaining infrastructure.

“It’s taken away operational burden from us and allows Microsoft to do what they do best in their Cloud space to manage those servers for us while we can streamline operations and focus on feature development for our customers,” Moore said.

McGinn likens it to having your head down or up: “When you’re running your own infrastructure, even if it is in a Cloud service, you’re heads down, you’re looking at the plumbing a lot, you’re having to make things work [and] you’re doing a lot of the heavy lifting yourself,” he said.

“With platform-as-a-service, particularly in the way Windows Azure is configured and the way it provides a service, it’s more of a heads up [scenario].”

The alliance with Microsoft will also allow Movideo’s customers to access a range of Microsoft’s services, such as its content delivery network. “Now we can offer our customers choice, whereas in the past customers have chosen their own or used one of our other partners. Customers can now use the Microsoft content delivery network, which is part of Windows Azure. This will allow us to give another pricing option for our clients in the marketplace.”

Despite the company having developed its current system in Java, Moore doesn't anticipate having to hire.NET developers to aid with the migration.

“So we haven’t had to change a lot of our code at all, with our focus on development, and the port has been quite smooth,” Moore said.

McGinn expects the migration to occur seamlessly – he said clients, which include the Ten Network and MCM in Australia, should not notice any difference except, potentially, slightly enhanced performance due to the location of data centres.

Migration to Windows Azure is expected to be completed in May this year.

Source http://www.computerworld.com.au/article/419442/movideo_migrates_video_platform_microsoft_cloud/

China 'wealth exodus' underestimated

New figures reveal the true cost of the country's 'investor emigration'

The scale of the exodus of wealth from China caused by investor immigration is much larger than previous estimated, according to China Daily's interviews with emigration agents and experts.

Last month, Legal Evening News, a Beijing metropolis daily, said 10 billion yuan ($1.57 billion) has found its way abroad annually since 2009.

The figure was based on the investor emigration requirement and the number of investor emigrants publicized by the governments of the United States, Canada and Australia. Investor emigrants to those three countries are believed to account for 80 percent of the total number of Chinese emigres.

However, emigration agents said the figure underestimates the real scale. That's because many people will transfer more money to their new 'home' countries once they've obtained permanent residency.

"Usually they will at least buy a house after they get residency," said Cai Hong, a manager with emigration consulting company HHL Overseas Immigration & Education.

"And they usually make a one-off payment,"Ma said, referring to the fact the emigrants have no need to resort to a mortgage.

Considering the average price of a house in the major cities of the United States, Canada and Australia - the countries where Chinese investor emigrants are most likely to settle - and the fact that around 80 percent of them will buy a house, an estimated 10.3 billion yuan finds its way into the property markets of the three countries per annum.

Adding in the money invested to secure permanent residency, which China Daily estimates to be 21.49 billion yuan, and the estimation that the three countries account for 80 percent of the emigrant population, the total wealth exodus could reach at least 39.75 billion yuan a year.

The Canada case

For its safety, relatively short waiting time to obtain permanent residency and good returns on investment, Canada has always been the premier choice for wealthy Chinese looking to obtain permanent residency through investment, emigration agents said.

Prior to 2010, a foreigner simply had to invest C$400,000 ($405,600) and prove net assets of C$800,000 to apply for permanent residency. However, in 2010, Citizenship and Immigration Canada, the country's immigration authority, doubled the threshold to limit the explosion in applications. Demand has been so strong that Canada imposed a cap of 700 applications per annum, starting on July 1, 2011. That quota was quickly filled, with 697 of the 700 applications coming from China.

The cap put a brake on the fever. The number of successful applicants from the Chinese mainland dropped from around 2,000 in 2010 to 697 in 2011, according to figures from the Canadian immigration authority.

However, potential immigrant investors quickly found another point of entry through Quebec's investor immigrant program. Since last July when the federal government's door closed, the Quebec program has seen the initiation of 200 applications from Chinese people every month.

"We expect the federal government's program to reopen this year and another 2,000 Chinese investors will get permanent residency," said Ma Yuan, an emigration expert with J & P Star Consulting Co Ltd, a Beijing-based emigration consultancy.

She said the Canadian program is particular favored by Chinese investors for its safety. Unlike the US program, which requires investment before permanent residency is granted, applicants to Canada invest their funds only after permanent residency is approved. The C$800,000 seed capital is returned to the applicants five years after residency is granted.

Applicants can even invest just C$220,000 and obtain a loan of C$580,000 from Canadian banks to bridge the gap. The C$220,000 will be transferred to the bank that issued the loan as interest five years later.

By comparison, the United States' investor immigrant program, the EB-5 program, despite its lower initial threshold (the minimum investment requirement is $500,000), does not guarantee against a loss of investment, which means that applicants might lose their seed capital and still not obtain permanent residency.

Another reason that people favor Canada is the country's welfare system.

"Most of the investor immigrants go to Canada for their kids' education," Cai said. The country offers free pre-college education for permanent residents, and their children can enjoy a college education at less than one-third of the tuition fee paid by international students pay.

Relatively cheaper house prices are another attraction. A detached house usually costs from C$500,000 to CS$600,000 in Vancouver, and C$400,000 to CS$500,000 in Toronto, much cheaper than in Beijing or Shanghai.

Based on the assumption that 80 percent of the 2,000 investor immigrants would buy a house at an average price of C$500,000, Canada's investor immigrant program alone could draw C$2.4 billion from China.

US a top destination

Despite its risks, the US investor immigration program remains a popular choice for wealthy Chinese.

A total of 2,969 Chinese people applied for the EB-5 visa in the fiscal year 2011, accounting for three-fourths of total applicants, according to figures released by the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services. Although many are still awaiting a decision, 934 permanent residencies have been granted.

The US is the top emigration destination, followed by Canada, Singapore and Europe, according to a joint survey by Bank of China Ltd and the Hurun Report last year. The report found that 60 percent of about 960,000 Chinese with assets of more than 10 million yuan were either thinking about emigrating or taking steps to do so.

Australia, another popular destination, requires foreigners to apply for a provisional visa before applying for permanent residency four years later. There are various visa types under the "Business Skills visas" system, which allows overseas investors, senior executives and entrepreneurial talents to settle in Australia by developing businesses in the country.

For example, the 890/892 visa allows provisional visa holders to obtain residency if they have had an ownership interest in a business in Australia for at least two years, with significant personal and business asset turnover.

Applicants for the "Business Skills visas" from China totaled more than 9,000 last year, nine times the number from South Korea, the second-largest group, according to the Australian immigration authority.

Kevin Stanley, executive director of global real estate consultancy CBRE Group Inc, said it has seen very strong interest from Chinese individuals looking to buy apartments, predominantly for family use and particularly in connection with children studying in Australia.

Chris Bevan, a real estate agent in Melbourne, said that his recent sales to buyers from Shanghai ranged from two bedroom apartments priced at A$300,000 ($314,000) to a luxury beachfront home for A$18 million.

Strong demand from Chinese buyers has already pushed up real estate price worldwide. Investors from the Chinese mainland account for between 20 and 40 percent of foreign property investors in Vancouver, Toronto, London and Singapore, according to a report from the real-estate consultancy Colliers International on Feb 28. In Vancouver, the property price has been pushed 9 percent higher in the last year, because of Chinese investors.

Reaction

People in industries related to the boom, such as the property market and emigration advisory services, have welcomed the trend. Bevan said that Chinese and other foreign investors have helped Australia continue to grow in a market that has seen an international downturn in the last 12 months.

Local residents interviewed by China Daily approved of the development.

John Harper, a town planner in Melbourne, said the total number of Chinese immigrants contributing to population growth in the city was somewhere between 3 to 4 percent.

"I doubt that figure would create a significant impact on house prices," he said.

"You never hear about New Zealand or British immigrants pushing up housing prices. These two groups make up about 30 percent of people moving to Australia, or three times the number of Chinese, I guess," he said.

"I don't really mind the 'influx' of Chinese going for permanent residency. I think there are guidelines and controls overseen by the Australian government," said Jeremy Lam, a financial analyst in Australia. "And these rules and regulations are gradually becoming more and more stringent over time."

But back in China, the news of the wealth exodus has sparked mixed sentiment.

"Nobody in the world can ever stop China's property speculators," according to a sarcastic post from one netizen on the micro blog Sina Weibo.

Some netizens have blamed the domestic cap on property sales imposed by the Chinese government for the overseas purchasing spree.

Chinese experts warn that talent is flowing out with wealth, which is a more worrying trend.

"If this trend continues it will not only hurt the Chinese economy in the long run, but also prevent it from building an 'olive-shaped' society with a large middle class, because a great proportion of the emigrants are middle-class professionals," said Zhang Monan, an economic researcher with the State Information Center.

Tania Lee contributed to this story.

zhengyangpeng@chinadaily.com.cn

China 'wealth exodus' underestimated

Source http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/cndy/2012-03/16/content_14845619.htm