Japan and China enter market for the brightest and best professionals

Canadian immigration officers should feel flattered by the imitation of their skills list by China and Japan, which recently entered the worldwide competition for the brightest and best migrants.

The two Asian giants have copied Canada’s newly reworked skills list in order to attract talented professional immigrants to their shores. In a late September issue of the China Daily, an as usual unnamed official stated that Beijing is busy identifying skills shortages across a swathe of occupation in its domestic labour market in order to attract qualified workers from overseas.

The wording of the report uncannily resembles a speech by Chris Alexander, Canada’s immigration minister, in which he said the government was specifically looking to recruit overseas talent by way of its Expression of Interest programme. Another common factor in the two announcements was Beijing’s call to private enterprise to help incomers to immediately integrate and contribute.

Even although they may not appreciate the competition, Canada’s immigration gurus should be pleased that their model for identifying crucial shortages and addressing them is considered a world leader. The Chinese national skills list will go public in 2014, and is expected to restrict itself to the upper echelons of the labour market in the technology, science and management skills fields.

Given the rising importance of southeast Asian’s tiger kittens of Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia and the Philippines and not forgetting their markets, it’s to be expected that the list will garner interest amongst restless Western professionals. China itself is already drawing a huge number of overseas students and related workers such as English teachers, and is expected to rival the USA as an expat destination over the next decade.