With over 300,000 new immigrants settling in Canada each year, most are attracted to the big city life to live the ‘Canadian dream’ and experience all the excitement living in a large North American city can offer. But in doing this, they could be overlooking better more prosperous opportunities outside the go to cities- Vancouver, Toronto, and Montreal.
Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada is trying to offer more guidance and enlightenment to Canadian newcomers by teaming up with Stanford University’s Immigration Policy Lab to develop a pilot program to use their matching algorithm that would make recommendations as to where a new immigrant might wish to settle to get the most out of their new life.
Named the GeoMatch project, engineered to connect people to places, newcomers to Canada can have their Canadian horizons expanded by this simple algorithm-based tool.
How Will It Work?
1. Information on past immigrants and their experiences including work history, education and other personal characteristics are submitted to GeoMatch;
2. GeoMatch finds patterns in the data revealing how different places make people more or less likely to succeed;
3. Using this data, GeoMatch predicts a new immigrant’s probability of success at a range of locations within Canada and recommends the best location for a particular newcomer.
Why Invest in GeoMatch?
Economic programs to Canada are geared towards identifying candidates who are more likely to succeed in Canada. But this objective reasoning can only go so far. With the likeliness of success being more closely tied to where the newcomer ultimately decides to settle in Canada, it is no wonder that IRCC have identified the need for such tool like GeoMatch to exist.
Rebecca Major
