From student to permanent resident: How international graduates in Canada can transition to PR
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Also Read: Canada to introduce new permanent residency route in 2025
Also Read: Canada updates minimum fund requirements for Express Entry applicants
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Gaining more skilled Canadian work experience
Retaking language tests for higher scores
Completing a higher level of education
Obtaining a valid job offer in Canada
Applying for a Provincial Nominee Program (PNP)
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International students studying in Canada are increasingly exploring permanent residency (PR) pathways after graduation. With structured routes like the Express Entry system, Post-Graduation Work Permit Program (PGWP) and various provincial nomination options, transitioning from student status to permanent residence has become a strategic process for many global learners in Canada.Canada, which hosts over 8,00,000 international students, as per Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada , offers some of the world's most accessible immigration pathways through education-to-PR policies. For international students, who make up the largest group of enrolees in Canada, understanding these options early is key to long-term settlement.Graduates from eligible Canadian designated learning institutions (DLIs) can apply for a Post-Graduation Work Permit, which allows them to stay and work in Canada for up to three years, depending on the duration of their academic program.This work experience becomes a vital qualification when applying for PR under programs like the Canadian Experience Class (CEC).To apply for permanent residency as a skilled worker, graduates must create an Express Entry profile through their IRCC secure account. Once in the pool, candidates are assessed using the Comprehensive Ranking System (CRS), which awards points based on education, language proficiency, age, Canadian work experience, and other factors.While entering the pool is the first step, only the highest-ranking candidates are issued an Invitation to Apply (ITA) during periodic draws. It is important to note that creating a profile does not guarantee an invitation.IRCC regularly encourages the candidates to boost their CRS score while in the pool by:Certain provinces actively recruit Express Entry candidates to fill local labour shortages.IRCC recently updated the settlement funds requirement, effective July 28, 2025, based on 50% of the low-income cut-off. Candidates must update their Express Entry profile to remain eligible.Applicants are also required to keep their profile up to date if they experience changes in marital status, work status, or education. Providing false information can result in disqualification, inadmissibility, or even a 5-year ban from reapplying.Graduates with expired PGWPs can still remain in the Express Entry pool but must take legal steps to restore their status. IRCC advises that individuals must not work without authorization, as this may affect their eligibility for PR.Candidates who do not restore their permits must leave Canada but may continue to be considered for PR while abroad.Canada's immigration model offers international graduates a realistic path to PR, combining academic credentials with skilled work experience. However, it requires proactive planning and a clear understanding of eligibility requirements and timelines.
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The Hindu
an hour ago
- The Hindu
Kerala students prefer higher education in Europe over the US
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- Hans India
The Third Eye: India's handling of Indo-US relations
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The Non Aligned Movement that India led was therefore reshaped into a strategy of developing bilateral relationships with all countries-big or small- on the basis of mutually beneficial security and economic interests. Finally, India found itself moving towards a leadership role in the South that basically wanted peace for economic growth. Strategic analysts have to rise above the details of policies a transient America under Donald Trump was pursuing or the direction European Union was consequently adopting in the present and see what was new in the geopolitical environment that India could strategise for- without getting trapped into the legacies of the past. India has a realistic assessment of where it stands in the scale of global economy and military power. India is aware that China was pursuing the economic route to becoming the second superpower, having drawn lessons from the demise of the Soviet Union, and that it was now the leader of the China-Russia combine. There were enough indications of a return to Cold War on the horizon between the China-led axis and the US but it is also a fact that China was still having to buy time for reaching a position where it could measure upto a situation of military confrontation with America. For India, 'strategic autonomy' is not a slogan but a way of remaining non-aligned in military conflicts of global implications, such as the Ukraine-Russia 'war' and the Israel-Iran conflagration, with the objective of serving the cause of world peace. India's pursuit of multi-polarity is not a strategic liability but a meaningful way of handling international relations in the present geopolitical flux. India is sending a clear message to China from the platforms of Quad, I2U2 and G20 about where will India's support lie in a future US-China conflict. Inspite of the erratic pronouncements of President Trump, he is consistent in denouncing Islamic Terrorism and identifying China as the main adversary of the US. Trump withdrew from the WHO on a specific grouse that the UN agency was China dominant. This provides enough common ground for building Indo-US strategic partnership notwithstanding the irritation Trump has caused to Indians by his one- sided pronouncements on trade and comments on the state of Indian economy. What should bother India's policy makers, however, is that President Trump was apparently not fully alive to the security threat posed by Sino-Pak strategic alliance to the world peace in general and to India in particular. Trump has tried to cultivate Pakistan, whose military leadership has been traditionally close to the Pentagon any way, for gathering support for his own personal ambition of securing the Nobel Peace Prize for resolving 'armed conflicts' in the world. Israel has backed the proposition, which is not a surprise. 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India has to take deep cognisance of an Indo-Pacific that was witnessing a greater contest at present, a more violent Middle East and the growing influence of China in India's neighbourhood. On balance, India has to lean towards a democratic US against a dictatorial China that was already betraying hostility towards this country. There was no need for India to rush to the American camp, however, and the policy of remaining an independent-minded observer of the world scene, ready to join in the cause of peace and human welfare, was in line with our strategic culture. Non-alignment for India has now changed to bilateral friendships with all-this has enabled India to respond to the trouble spots of the world with a call for peace and negotiations. 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In the battle royale of global e-commerce, the names are familiar and formidable: Amazon. TikTok Shop. Shein. Temu. But in Southeast Asia, home to 675 million people and a $160 billion online shopping market, the reigning monarch is an app the color of a traffic cone. It's called Shopee. And it's thriving. Owned by Singapore-based Sea Ltd., Shopee has pulled off one of the more improbable corporate comebacks in recent memory, sending its stock soaring more than 300% since the start of 2024. A key secret weapon is a little known logistics operation powered by an army of homemakers, students and retirees. And the help of some very large Ikea bags. That operation is SPX Express, a homegrown in-house delivery network that Sea spent years building in the shadows. While rivals like Inc. plastered ads across the city for Black Friday and TikTok Shop flooded feeds with flash sales, Shopee was busy rewiring the infrastructure of Southeast Asian commerce one community at a time. They're a familiar sight in Singapore. The retired 'uncle' in flip-flops, slinging parcels across a housing block in an ever-practical blue Ikea bag. Or an entrepreneurial homemaker busily sorting a makeshift Shopee kiosk beside the elevator. They're the human backbone of SPX Express, which now handles the majority of Shopee's several billion parcels annually. And Wall Street has noticed. Shopee's success has helped Sea inch toward a $100 billion market cap, on the heels of Singaporean banking giant DBS, the region's most valuable company. The stock, listed on the New York Stock Exchange, has soared 324% since hitting a low in January last year. Of the 41 analysts tracked by Bloomberg who rate Sea, 33 of them have a 'buy' recommendation on the stock. 'Sea's significant recovery was largely driven by growth in its e-commerce business, which was executed really well during the post-Covid period,' said Hussaini Saifee, an equity research analyst at Maybank Securities Pte., who rates the stock a 'buy.' In 2021, Shopee was facing a conundrum: demand was exploding — especially during the Covid pandemic — but its delivery pipeline was buckling under the pressure. Until then, Shopee had relied mostly on third-party carriers like J&T Global Express Ltd. and Singapore Post to navigate the logistical complexity of Southeast Asia: thousands of islands, alleys too narrow for vans, dirt roads more familiar to scooters than trucks. That changed almost overnight. As online orders more than doubled in 2021, Sea bet big on building its own logistics arm. During a 2022 Sea earnings call, Chief Executive Officer Forrest Li pledged to build up its logistics business, spending nearly $1 billion that year alone. Lowering the cost of delivering parcels will be 'key to long-term growth,' he said. It was a big risk during a difficult period. Sea had just lost almost 90% of its value from its 2021 peak. Investors were disillusioned about its money-making potential in a global tech rout, scrutinizing Sea's growth prospects after shoppers emerging from pandemic lockdowns started cutting back on online purchases. The gaming and e-commerce giant had cut about 7,000 jobs to try assuage some of these concerns. It also shuttered its e-commerce operations in some European and Latin American markets and said it would reduce expenses to cope. Read: Sea's Path to Profit Paved With Layoffs, Single-Ply Toilet Paper CEO Li brought in Hoirul Hafiidz Bin Maksom, a bespectacled 43-year-old former hospital operator, experienced in coordinating large local teams in a high stakes, time-sensitive, customer-centric environment. Over the span of two years, as Hoirul obsessed over shortening delivery timings and ways to bring down costs, Sea built up a network of delivery drivers, warehouses and thousands of collection points. The market share of its logistics operations in Southeast Asia, which was essentially non-existent in 2022, grew to about 25% in 2024, according to research firm Momentum Works. 'Covid was a great accelerator for us,' said Hoirul. 'There was definitely a gap in the services available for last-mile logistics, just because e-commerce was just growing too fast during Covid. So we had to do our part and solve this problem.' Today, SPX Express is a finely tuned operation. At midnight, sorting centers buzz to life. Parcels are unpacked, scanned, and routed via conveyor belts into color-coded plastic bags — blue, orange, green and purple — each representing a different part of the island. One such sorting facility can processes up to 400,000 parcels a day. With SPX Express, 90% of its parcels are delivered the next day in Singapore. In the rest of Asia, almost half of SPX Express orders were delivered within two days. But what's truly characteristic to Shopee begins after the parcels leave the warehouse. SPX Express' edge is in its intimacy. It's the fact that your parcel might be delivered by your retired neighbor, or the kid next door looking to earn pocket money. People like John, a 64-year-old who's been delivering in his neighborhood for four years, going up and down apartments in a quarter-mile radius to hand over hundreds of parcels every day. He does it for the money, sure — a little extra cash is always nice. But he also likes the community. 'I've made so many friends, I get to chat with elderly neighbors who welcome me into their home and witness milestones of so many families,' John said. Shopee scaled this model. Hoirul's lightbulb moment came while walking through his public housing estate last year. He noticed that neighbors were already informally receiving parcels on behalf of others. Why not pay them? This would be easy to set up, the parcels would be safe and SPX Express would be able to leverage the existing public housing infrastructure of Singapore, where more than 80% of the population lives. So Shopee started doing just that — setting up collection points in the very homes of the people who live in the buildings they deliver to. Shopee now has more than 3,500 of these sites, which also include shops and lockers, across Singapore. Some look like tidy mini post offices. Others are literally living rooms stacked with brown packages and a folding table. Pearlyn Tan and her husband, a delivery driver, run one out of their flat. She handles up to 80 parcels a day. At 30 Singapore cents per package , they earn enough to cover a few days of groceries each week. Then there's Diyana Scott, a TikTok influencer and mother of five, who turned to Shopee after losing her job earlier this year. Her whole family helps. Her kids rotate shifts and greet neighbors collecting their orders. 'I made new friendships with many mothers in the neighborhood,' Scott said. 'I love it.' 'Shopee's vibrant orange is plastered over thousands of touchpoints all across Southeast Asia — delivery trucks, parcel lockers and sometimes even on the back of motorbikes,' said Jianggan Li, founder of Singapore-based research firm Momentum Works. 'This level of visibility, coupled with the human touch, helps Shopee reinforce their presence in the fabric of life of locals; especially across Southeast Asia's diverse landscape and hard-to-reach places in the region.' By the fall of 2024, Sea's logistics arm was delivering a majority of its own packages. It also briefly surpassed J&T Express, according to Momentum Works. SPX is also partnering with other companies like Shopify to expand its logistics services. Ahead of Sea's second quarter earnings on Aug. 12, the company is forecast to post a record $5 billion in revenue, according to Bloomberg estimates. Its e-commerce arm is projected to account for 72% of sales, with value-added services including logistics estimated to contribute $799 million, up 14% from a year ago. Shopee's market share has jumped to 56% of $120 billion in gross merchandise value last year, according to Momentum Works based on the top four Southeast Asian e-commerce platforms. TikTok Shop and Lazada claimed 19% and 15%, respectively. But SPX Express isn't friction-free. Residents complain that they are using shared public spaces to sort parcels and local councils in Singapore often make them shift from one block to another. And the gig-like pay structure, with typical payouts of S$0.50 per parcel, mean workers often hustle longer hours to keep up with rising volumes. Also, while SPX may have briefly overtaken J&T Express in parcel volume, margins remain tight and SPX has yet to prove that it can win outside of Shopee's terrain as it looks to offer its logistics services to more companies. Meanwhile, TikTok Shop remains a formidable force with its tight partnership with J&T Express and deep-pocketed investment in the region. 'TikTok Shop's emergence was a concern for Shopee because they have the capital backing from ByteDance to take market share,' said Maybank's Saifee. 'Shopee's retention of its market share is linked to SPX Express, as well as increasing the assortment on their platform and bringing down prices by working together with sellers.' But it's clear that Shopee has become part of the social fabric in Southeast Asia. In Indonesia, SPX collection points operate out of warungs — small family shops that double as pickup depots. In Taiwan, they've been installed in convenience stores and shops filled with Shopee lockers. In Brazil, where Shopee has also expanded, the network is growing too. John, the retiree, has witnessed first hand how fast Shopee has expanded and isn't worried about the competition. The number of packages he delivers has tripled in four years. He knows his neighbors' unit numbers by heart and sometimes slips the package behind their shoe rack if they're not home. 'I just take things in my stride,' said John, hurrying off with two Ikea bags full of parcels. This article was generated from an automated news agency feed without modifications to text.
