Canada to give high earners more immigration from 3rd November 2026

If you’re one of the many expats in Kuwait who keeps half an eye on Canada’s immigration rules, just in case a move abroad ever becomes the plan, this is worth a pause over your karak. Canada says it’s about to make it a little easier for high-wage job offers to turn into permanent residency, and that could matter to anyone here weighing a long-term move away from Kuwait.

The change doesn’t touch anyone’s residency or work permit in Kuwait directly. But for the thousands of professionals, engineers, nurses, IT staff and others living here who have Canada on their radar as a next step, it’s a meaningful shift in how the points system treats salary.

What’s actually changing?

Right now, Canada’s main economic immigration route, Express Entry, ranks candidates using a points system known as the Comprehensive Ranking System (CRS). Points come from things like age, education, language skills, work experience, and whether you already have a valid job offer in Canada.

Under the plan, high-wage earners will get more points simply for the salary attached to their job offer. The idea is to steer immigration points toward people already earning well, on the theory that they’ll contribute more to the Canadian economy faster.

The second part of the change is about the LMIA. For those who haven’t dealt with Canadian immigration paperwork, an LMIA is a document Canadian employers usually need before hiring a foreign worker. It’s meant to prove no Canadian citizen or permanent resident is available for the job, and getting one can take months and plenty of paperwork.

Under the new approach, qualifying job offers, specifically those tied to high enough wages, won’t need an LMIA at all. That’s a direct change for Canadian employers, who currently have to go through that process before they can sponsor a foreign hire.

Why is Canada doing this?

According to Adam Hajji, director of government relations at the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, removing the LMIA requirement for qualifying offers will ease the administrative burden on employers across the country, help clear the existing backlog of applications, and increase predictability for both businesses and skilled workers who want to contribute to the Canadian economy.

In plain terms, Canada has a backlog problem. Employers who want to hire skilled foreign workers have been stuck waiting on LMIA approvals, and that’s slowed down hiring at a time Canada says it wants to attract talent to support economic growth. Scrapping the LMIA step for certain high-wage offers is meant to speed that whole pipeline up.

So who does this actually affect?

On the Canadian side, it’s mainly employers hoping to sponsor skilled foreign workers, and the foreign workers themselves who no longer have to wait on an LMIA before their application can move forward.

For readers in Kuwait, this mostly matters if you’re a skilled professional already planning or considering a Canadian immigration application, particularly through Express Entry, and especially if you’ve got a job offer in hand or expect one. A higher salary attached to that offer could now count for more points toward your permanent residency application than it did before.

It’s a smaller but real point for recruiters and companies here too. Kuwait is home to a large pool of skilled expat workers in finance, healthcare, engineering and tech, many of whom Canadian employers actively recruit. If LMIA requirements ease for well-paid roles, hiring someone currently based in Kuwait could become faster and less bureaucratic for a Canadian company.

What this means if you’re in Kuwait weighing a move

If Canada is part of your long-term thinking, it’s worth keeping an eye on how exactly the points boost is calculated once full details are published, since the source material doesn’t specify exact figures or a start date. What’s confirmed so far is the direction: higher wages will count more, and some job offers will skip the LMIA step entirely.

This sits alongside other changes Kuwait’s expat community has been tracking lately, from how GCC countries compare for expat life to Kuwait’s own rules on contract termination, as more people here weigh staying in the Gulf against building a life elsewhere.

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