Nova Scotia’s population has breached one million people, which is largely thanks to immigration.

Nova Scotia passed the population milestone following record growth since July 2021. The month before, Canada had lifted travel restriction on approved residents, which had limited immigration since the border closed in March 2020.

“More people make us stronger in every way,” said Nova Scotia’s Premier Tim Houston in a media release. “We all benefit from this growth with a greater tax base, new businesses and jobs, greater diversity and culture and improved infrastructure.”

A provincial government media release says immigration played a large part in the population’s growth. Nova Scotia’s population grew 5,696 in the first quarter of 2021, the largest increase in a first quarter since 1971.

In 2020, most immigrants to Nova Scotia came from India, China, the Philippines, Korea, and the United Kingdom.

The province’s current immigration retention rate is at 71 per cent, the highest out of the Atlantic provinces. These four east-coast provinces have historically seen newcomers come and go in search of jobs or more urban centres.

One of the province’s key priorities is to support economic growth by attracting workers and entrepreneurs. To support this goal, Nova Scotia is preparing to launch a $2.5-million marketing initiative to promote immigration to the government.

The province also wants to grow the population to two million by 2060. In order to do this, Nova Scotia aims to attract 25,000 newcomers per year through a combination of inter-provincial migration as well as immigration.

UK Updates

Attending a biometrics appointment may be required for your immigration or nationality application submitted from within the UK, and in doing so you will be asked to have your fingerprints and photograph taken, as well as submitting the supporting documents for your application. In this blog, we discuss the planned closures of appointment centres across the UK during the upcoming festive season.

The Global Business Mobility visa, set to launch in spring 2022, may provide overseas firms with new and alternative means by which to transfer staff to the UK.

The new visa will enable an overseas business to temporarily send an employee to the UK for a specific corporate purpose that could not be done by a resident worker. It will also require employers to sponsor the workers they are bringing in under this route.

Who will be able to use the Global Business Mobility route?

The Global Business Mobility visa will be an umbrella category for the following five types of temporary workers from overseas firms:

• 1. Senior or specialist worker to meet specific business needs.
• 2. Graduate trainee as part of a training programme.
• 3. Secondment worker to UK firms in high value contracts or investments.
• 4. Service supplier to the UK in line with UK trade agreements.
• 5. UK expansion worker to establish a UK presence.

This new route reforms existing visas such as the Intra-Company Transfer and Intra-Company Graduate Trainee visas, Representative of an Overseas Business and Temporary Work – International Agreement. For example, the current Representative of an Overseas Business rule allows an overseas company to send only one person to the UK. Alternatively, the new proposed UK expansion worker category will allow companies to send a small team of employees to the UK.

On 12 December 2021, Israel announced that the UK has been added to its “red list” for travel in view of concerns over the spread of the Omicron COVID-19 variant.

Effective from 16 December 2021, Israel will ban its citizens and permanent residents from travelling to the UK unless they get advance permission from the Exceptions Committee or they will be transiting through the UK for less than 12 hours without leaving the airport of arrival.

At the same time, from 16 December 2021, non-Israeli citizens will be banned from entering Israel from the UK unless they also have permission from the Exceptions Committee. Israeli citizens arriving back from the UK will be taken to a managed isolation facility where they must remain until their PCR test result taken on arrival is confirmed as negative. This is regardless of vaccination status. If the test result is negative and provided that the individual is able to isolate alone, away from other household members, they will be allowed to complete their remaining isolation period of 14 days total at home.