How the Australian Immigration system is decades ahead of Canada!



Canada and Australia are two of the most attractive destinations for prospective immigrants, temporary or permanent. Though it was Canada in 1967, that introduced the world to the point based skilled immigration, but in the past few years or decades if I must say, it is Australia which has lead the world in immigration reforms.

Immigration innovation makes the process simpler and faster for the end user, is cost effective, environment friendly, removes/ reduces the chance of making mistakes on an immigration application and definitely saves time for everyone. And is not only Australia alone, but various other countries like New Zealand etc are moving forward on introducing rapid immigration reforms. Let us look at three different scenarios where Australia scores over Canada:

1.       Visa Labels

In November 2002, Australia introduced the concept of eVisa, allowing students from across the globe to apply for Australian study permit online. In April 2008, Australia did away with stamping visa labels in the passports of International students and in since 2015, Australia completely did away with Visa labels in passports of all kinds of applicants and instead started to store all records in the central database.

The policy of not issuing visa labels not only saves time and money in sending the passport, but also removes an unnecessary function for the official in visa post, which can be used on doing something more productive.

New Zealand has followed suit and does not issue visa labels anymore. Looks like, this is the way forward. However Canada is yet to introduce something like that.

2.       Electronic Travel Authorization/ Authority (eTA)

Australia introduced the concept of eTA back in September 1996 whereas; Canada introduced the same in the year 2016, good 20 years later than Australia. The difference is the Canadian eTA costs the user CA$ 7, allows the visitor to stay in Canada for up to 6 months and is valid for 5 years; whereas the Australian eTA costs AU$ 20, allows the visitor to stay for up to 3 months and is valid for 1 year. What does this mean for Australia? More revenue to improve/ invest in better systems.

3.       Online Application System

Australia started with the online system in 2002 when it introduced eVisa for study permit applications and has since assimilated most of its services online in the form of a system called ImmiAccount. Canada is also moving towards assimilating its services online under the MyCIC account; however some important services like applying for Canadian citizenship are still paper based. Just getting an acknowledgement of receipt in such paper based applications can sometimes take around 90 days.

What are the reasons for Australia moving faster with Immigration reforms than Canada?

Visa application fee comparison for some of the most sought after visa categories for the two countries gives a clear indication of where the difference lies. Australia charges a hefty fee from immigrant applicants, as compared to Canada. Here is a small comparison:


The above difference in fee gives the Australian government ample financial resources to invest substantially in its immigration systems. Let’s also compare the annual budget of the two nations for immigration:


The above figures reveal that Australia invests more than double the amount of money into its immigration systems as compared to Canada. And, this despite the fact that annual immigration numbers for Australia are much lower than of Canada:


Both the countries are extremely welcoming of the incoming immigrants and are doing everything it takes to make their assimilation into the society as smooth as possible. This piece is not to say once country is better than the other, instead it is a small take on how the countries fare when it comes to immigration (process) innovation and where they could possible get better at.  The end objective is to make the system futuristic, better and useful for the end user (migrant) and employ cutting edge technology into its systems.

Please feel free to share your comments.


Kunal Thakur
Regulated Canadian Immigration Consultant

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