#trade occupations

[theborderlessworld]

What’s New for Express Entry in 2025?

In 2024, Canada introduced significant updates to the Express Entry system. These changes are expected to have a major impact on the country’s largest economic immigration programs in 2025.

This article highlights key trends affecting Express Entry in 2025 and their potential impact on how candidates are selected.

Greater Focus on Express Entry Targets

In 2025, Express Entry will account for a larger share of Canada’s total immigration targets. The federal government has increased the number of planned admissions under federal economic programs to 124,590, a rise from 110,770 in 2024.

Simultaneously, overall immigration levels are set to decrease by 20% compared to 2024 targets. This reduction enables the federal government to exert greater control over immigration, as fewer admissions will be processed through provincial and regional pathways.

Express Entry is set to become a more critical part of Canada’s immigration framework. The Federal High-Skilled (FHS) allocation, which includes Express Entry, will form a significant share of the 2025 immigration targets.

In 2024, FHS represented 22.8% of total planned permanent resident admissions.

In 2025, this share—now divided into “In-Canada Focus” and “Federal Economic Priorities”—will increase to 31.5% of overall admissions.

Additionally, the allocation for the Provincial Nominee Program (PNP) will be reduced from 110,000 planned admissions in 2024 to 55,000 in 2025. As a result, more economic immigration admissions will be processed through Express Entry.

This shift underscores the growing importance of Express Entry-managed programs as key pathways for skilled workers aiming to move to Canada in 2025.

Job Offers No Longer Award CRS Points

In December 2024, Immigration Minister Marc Miller announced a major change effective in spring 2025: valid job offers will no longer contribute points to a candidate's Comprehensive Ranking System (CRS) score.

Currently, Express Entry candidates can earn either 50 or 200 points for a valid job offer, depending on the job’s level. With this update, those points will be removed. While this is labeled a "temporary measure," Immigration, Refugees, and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) has not provided an end date for the policy.

This change will only apply to candidates in the Express Entry pool after the policy takes effect.

Impact of Removing Job Offer Points

The removal of CRS points for job offers could lower the scores of many candidates in the Express Entry pool. However, it remains uncertain how this will influence CRS cut-off scores and the overall selection outcomes in 2025.

Candidates who previously relied on job offer points may need to focus on other factors scored by the CRS, such as:

Language proficiency

Work experience

Educational qualifications

This adjustment emphasizes the importance of strengthening human capital factors for candidates seeking to improve their chances under Express Entry in 2025.

New Subcategories Replacing Federal High-Skilled (FHS) Allocations in 2025

In the past, the Federal High-Skilled (FHS) allocation in Canada’s annual Immigration Levels Plan governed the selection of immigrants through Express Entry. However, starting in 2025, this allocation will be replaced with two new subcategories: Federal Economic Priorities and In-Canada Focus.

These subcategories represent a significant change in how candidates are selected for permanent residency, reflecting Canada’s evolving immigration priorities.

Subcategories and Their Allocations

The Immigration Levels Plan for 2025 details these two new subcategories:

Category Name

Landings Allocations

Candidates Considered

In-Canada Focus

82,890

Candidates already residing in Canada, including those under the Canadian Experience Class (CEC), Express Entry-aligned Provincial Nominee Program (PNP), Federal Skilled Worker Program (FSWP), and Federal Skilled Trades Program (FSTP).

Federal Economic Priorities

41,700

Candidates selected through category-based draws based on Canada’s labor market needs and demographic goals, such as those in healthcare, trades, or with French language skills.

Emphasis on Category-Based Selections

The year 2025 will see a greater focus on category-based draws, particularly under the Federal Economic Priorities subcategory.

Priority Categories for 2025

As outlined in the 2025–2027 Immigration Levels Plan, IRCC will prioritize the following groups for Express Entry:

Healthcare occupations

Trades occupations

French-language proficiency

Although 2024 had limited draws targeting healthcare and trades occupations, these categories are expected to gain more attention in 2025 due to their designation as priority sectors.

The French proficiency category has already seen consistent draws in 2024. It will remain a central focus in 2025, as Canada aims to increase francophone immigration outside Quebec. The government’s goal is for 8.5% of new immigrant admissions in 2025 to be from the French proficiency category, rising to 9.5% in 2026.

Comprehensive List of Priority Categories

In addition to healthcare, trades, and French language skills, IRCC has identified other priority sectors for category-based draws in 2025:

Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) occupations

Transport occupations

Agriculture and Agri-food occupations

These categories reflect Canada’s strategy to address labor market shortages and demographic challenges, ensuring that immigration supports the nation’s economic growth and cultural diversity.

Conclusion

The introduction of Federal Economic Priorities and In-Canada Focus subcategories signals a shift in Canada’s Express Entry system for 2025. With a stronger emphasis on category-based draws, skilled workers in targeted industries and those with French language skills will have greater opportunities to secure permanent residency. Aspiring immigrants should closely monitor these changes and align their profiles with Canada’s updated priorities.

[expresswayimmigration]

Latest Express Entry Draw Dec 21, 2023

[nyaa]

北へ。/ Kita e. White Illumination (1999) Sega Dreamcast

[overkeehl]

Art exchange with the lovely and talented @zimt-deathnote !

We have each gave eachother 3 colours and a prompt, and I promptly did my own thing 😅

Colours were an orange, a dark purple, and a purple gray and prompt was tending (soldering iron) wounds. This was super fun, let's do it again sometime!

See their lovely piece here!

[gammija]

musing about what a translation of the silt verses would sound like and immediately running headfirst into the problem of whether and how to translate 'Sister Carpenter'

[feckcops]

Workers around the world can stand up for Palestinians

“Understanding what is happening in Palestine is only part of the battle — we must also think about how we can take action in solidarity with the Palestinian people.

“In recent days, Palestinian trade unions have called on workers around the world to demand an ‘end to all forms of complicity with Israel’s crimes’ by taking action to disrupt the flow of weapons to the Israeli war machine.

“There are several Israeli weapons companies located across the UK, including Elbit Systems, which has frequently been targeted by Palestinian organizers. UK weapons manufacturers like BAE Systems are also involved with the construction of technology being used against Palestine. The Campaign Against the Arms Trade (CAAT) and other NGOs have compiled data that shows the embeddedness of British industry in producing weapons for use by Israel.

“The very least Palestine should be able to expect from the world in terms of solidarity is an end to their active complicity in the terror being unleashed by the Israeli state. It is critical that British trade unions express solidarity with Palestine — and consider ways to disrupt the shipment of arms to Israel.

“There is a long tradition of such international solidarity within the labor movement. In the 1970s, workers in a factory manufacturing jets being used by Pinochet’s brutal authoritarian regime announced a boycott of shipments to Chile. More recently, unionized workers in Italy, South Africa, and the United States refused to load shipments of arms headed to Israel.

“It is easy to think of these as small, isolated actions that do little to arrest the functioning of the global arms trade. However, history has shown that actions, however small, can be of outsized importance in placing material limitations on the criminal actions of states.”

[nonbinoclard]

[scopophilic1997]

scopOphilic_micromessaging_890 - scopOphilic1997 presents a new micro-messaging series: small, subtle, and often unintentional messages we send and receive verbally and non-verbally.

[secular-jew]

PSA: Islam is NOT a benevolent ideology. Rather, Islam IS a colonial, imperialist, intolerant, subjugating, violent, murdering, and oppressive ideology. But most especially, Islam was the greatest slave taking, slave trading, and slave raping entity ever known to mankind. More than the Roman (and other European) Empires. Slavery has been a "given" from its inception, and has been a large part of its wealth and expansion since Muhammad arrived to Yathrib (now Medina), throughout its 1,414 year history, and even continues to this very day.

The sheer quantity of slaves kidnapped out of Africa, is a big differentiator. While all empires depended on slaves to one degree or another, Islam began kidnapping slaves out of Africa CENTURIES BEFORE the European slave trade began, and lasted much longer. Not for nothing, but, a big part of Islamic slavery of Africans (and Jews and others) is a sexual component, where women were kidnapped to be sexual slaves to the militant men. The women were kidnapped in order to service the sexual whims of Islamic men, and also to breed more Muslims. We've seen this in recent years as thousands of young female Africans have been kidnapped by Boko Haram, Al Shabad, and ISIS (to name a few) from Nigeria, Sudan, and Northern Iraq (ie, Yazidi girls and women).

Why do we not learn in history courses, that Islam is the greatest slave empire of all time, dramatically eclipsing any of the others?

It's estimated that Islamic jihadi armies took over 100 million slaves out of Africa, and marched them by foot, into the Middle East. It is also estimated that more than 10% of the kidnapped Africans, died on the way, from starvation, exhaustion, dehydration, and physical abuse. The number of dead slaves is more than the number of Jews killed in the Holocaust. This makes Islam a bigger killer than the Nazis.

Islam, which claims to be the "last religion" and the "Religion of Peace" is not just one of the most violent and oppressive empires on the planet, it has not only taken more land and occupies vast swaths of Arabia, Africa, and Southeast Asia (and now encompasses 56 countries), but it has also been one the largest slave traders.

In fact, slave trading in Islam still exists today.

Not only that, the world in Arabic "abeed" is an interchangeable word for slave and a slur for black people.

Far from being an ethical religion, Islam is imbued with brutality and disregard towards all men and women, not to mention, in practice, racism against blacks and all non-Muslims.

[agentfascinateur]

[news4dzhozhar]

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[theculturedmarxist]

The Taliban government in Afghanistan – the nation that until recently produced 90% of the world’s heroin – has drastically reduced opium cultivation across the country. Western sources estimate an up to 99% reduction in some provinces. This raises serious questions about the seriousness of U.S. drug eradication efforts in the country over the past 20 years. And, as global heroin supplies dry up, experts tell MintPress News that they fear this could spark the growing use of fentanyl – a drug dozens of times stronger than heroin that already kills more than 100,000 Americans yearly.

[...]

The Taliban’s successful campaign to eradicate drug production has cast a shadow of doubt over the effectiveness of American-led endeavors to achieve the same outcome. “It prompts the question, ‘What were we actually accomplishing there?!'” remarked Hoh, underscoring:

This undermines one of the fundamental premises behind the wars: the alleged association between the Taliban and the drug trade – a concept of a narco-terror nexus. However, this notion was fallacious. The reality was that Afghanistan was responsible for a staggering 80-90% of the world’s illicit opiate supply. The primary controllers of this trade were the Afghan government and military, entities we upheld in power.”

Hoh clarified that he never personally witnessed or received any reports of direct involvement by U.S. troops or officials in narcotics trafficking. Instead, he contended that there existed a “conscious and deliberate turning away from the unfolding events” during his tenure in Afghanistan.’

Suzanna Reiss, an academic at the University of Hawaii at Manoa and the author of “We Sell Drugs: The Alchemy of U.S. Empire,” demonstrated an even more cynical perspective on American counter-narcotics endeavors as she conveyed to MintPress:

The U.S. has never really been focused on reducing the drug trade in Afghanistan (or elsewhere for that matter). All the lofty rhetoric aside, the U.S. has been happy to work with drug traffickers if the move would advance certain geopolitical interests (and indeed, did so, or at least turned a knowingly blind eye, when groups like the Northern Alliance relied on drugs to fund their political movement against the regime.).”

Afghanistan’s transformation into a preeminent narco-state owes a significant debt to Washington’s actions. Poppy cultivation in the 1970s was relatively limited. However, the tide changed in 1979 with the inception of Operation Cyclone, a massive infusion of funds to Afghan Mujahideen factions aimed at exhausting the Soviet military and terminating its presence in Afghanistan. The U.S. directed billions toward the insurgents, yet their financial needs persisted. Consequently, the Mujahideen delved into the illicit drug trade. By the culmination of Operation Cyclone, Afghanistan’s opium production had soared twentyfold. Professor Alfred McCoy, acclaimed author of “The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade,” shared with MintPress that approximately 75% of the planet’s illegal opium output was now sourced from Afghanistan, a substantial portion of the proceeds funneling to U.S.-backed rebel factions.

Unraveling the Opioid Crisis: An Impending Disaster

The opioid crisis is the worst addiction epidemic in U.S. history. Earlier this year, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas described the American fentanyl problem as “the single greatest challenge we face as a country.” Nearly 110,000 Americans died from drug overdoses in 2021, fentanyl being by far the leading cause. Between 2015 and 2021, the National Institute of Health recorded a nearly 7.5-fold increase in overdose deaths. Medical journal The Lancet predicts that 1.2 million Americans will die from opioid overdoses by 2029.

U.S. officials blame Mexican cartels for smuggling the synthetic painkiller across the southern border and China for producing the chemicals necessary to make the drug.

White Americans are more likely to misuse these types of drugs than other races. Adults aged 35-44 experience the highest rates of deaths, although deaths among younger people are surging. Rural America has been particularly hard hit; a 2017 study by the National Farmers Union and the American Farm Bureau Federation found that 74% of farmers have been directly impacted by the opioid epidemic. West Virginia and Tennessee are the states most badly hit.

For writer Chris Hedges, who hails from rural Maine, the fentanyl crisis is an example of one of the many “diseases of despair” the U.S. is suffering from. It has, according to Hedges, “risen from a decayed world where opportunity, which confers status, self-esteem and dignity, has dried up for most Americans. They are expressions of acute desperation and morbidity.” In essence, when the American dream fizzled out, it was replaced by an American nightmare. That white men are the prime victims of these diseases of despair is an ironic outgrowth of our unfair system. As Hedges explained:

White men, more easily seduced by the myth of the American dream than people of color who understand how the capitalist system is rigged against them, often suffer feelings of failure and betrayal, in many cases when they are in their middle years. They expect, because of notions of white supremacy and capitalist platitudes about hard work leading to advancement, to be ascendant. They believe in success.”

In this sense, it is important to place the opioid addiction crisis in a wider context of American decline, where opportunities for success and happiness are fewer and farther between than ever, rather than attribute it to individuals. As the “Lancet” wrote: “Punitive and stigmatizing approaches must end. Addiction is not a moral failing. It is a medical condition and poses a constant threat to health.”

A “Uniquely American Problem”

Nearly 10 million Americans misuse prescription opioids every year and at a rate far higher than comparable developed countries. Deaths due to opioid overdose in the United States are ten times more common per capita than in Germany and more than 20 times as frequent in Italy, for instance.

Much of this is down to the United States’ for-profit healthcare system. American private insurance companies are far more likely to favor prescribing drugs and pills than more expensive therapies that get to the root cause of the issue driving the addiction in the first place. As such, the opioid crisis is commonly referred to as a “uniquely American problem.”

Part of the reason U.S. doctors are much more prone to doling out exceptionally strong pain medication relief than their European counterparts is that they were subject to a hyper-aggressive marketing campaign from Purdue Pharma, manufacturers of the powerful opioid OxyContin. Purdue launched OxyContin in 1996, and its agents swarmed doctors’ offices to push the new “wonder drug.”

Yet, in lawsuit after lawsuit, the company has been accused of lying about both the effectiveness and the addictiveness of OxyContin, a drug that has hooked countless Americans onto opioids. And when legal but incredibly addictive prescription opioids dry up, Americans turned to illicit substances like heroin and fentanyl as substitutes.

Purdue Pharma owners, the Sackler family, have regularly been described as the most evil family in America, with many laying the blame for the hundreds of thousands of overdose deaths squarely at their door. In 2019, under the weight of thousands of lawsuits against it, Purdue Pharma filed for bankruptcy. A year later, it plead guilty to criminal charges over its mismarketing of OxyContin.

Nevertheless, the Sacklers made out like bandits from their actions. Even after being forced last year to pay nearly $6 billion in cash to victims of the opioid crisis, they remain one of the world’s richest families and have refused to apologize for their role in constructing an empire of pain that has caused hundreds of thousands of deaths.

Instead, the family has attempted to launder their image through philanthropy, sponsoring many of the most prestigious arts and cultural institutions in the world. These include the Guggenheim Museum and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, Yale University, and the British Museum and Royal Academy in London.

One group who are disproportionately affected by opioids like OxyContin, heroin and fentanyl are veterans. According to the National Institutes of Health, veterans are twice as likely to die from overdose than the general population. One reason for this is bureaucracy. “The Veterans Administration did a really poor job in the past decades with their pain management, particularly their reliance on opioids,” Hoh, a former marine, told MintPress, noting that the V.A. prescribed dangerous opioids at a higher rate than other healthcare agencies.

Ex-soldiers often have to cope with chronic pain and brain injuries. Hoh noted that around a quarter-million veterans of Afghanistan and Iraq have traumatic brain injuries. But added to that are the deep moral injuries many suffered – injuries that typically cannot be seen. As Hoh noted:

Veterans are turning to [opioids like fentanyl] to deal with the mental, emotional and spiritual consequences of the war, using them to quell the distress, try to find some relief, escape from the depression, and deal with the demons that come home with veterans who took part in those wars.”

Thus, if the Taliban’s opium eradication program continues, it could spark a fentanyl crisis that might kill more Americans than the 20-year occupation ever did.

Broken Society

If diseases of despair are common throughout the United States, they are rampant in Afghanistan itself. A global report released in March revealed that Afghans are by far the most miserable people on Earth. Afghans evaluated their lives at 1.8 out of 10 – dead last and far behind the top of the pile Finland (7.8 out of 10).

Opium addiction in Afghanistan is out of control, with around 9% of the adult population (and a significant number of children) addicted. Between 2005 and 2015, the number of adult drug users jumped from 900,000 to 2.4 million, according to the United Nations, which estimates that almost one in three households is directly affected by addiction. As opium is frequently injected, blood-transmitted conditions like HIV are common as well.

The opioid problem has also spilled into neighboring countries such as Iran and Pakistan. A 2013 United Nations report estimated that almost 2.5 million Pakistanis were abusing opioids, including 11% of people in the northwestern province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Around 700 people die each day from overdoses.

Empire of Drugs

Given their history, It is perhaps understandable that Asian nations have generally taken far more authoritarian measures to counter drug addiction issues. For centuries, using the illegal drug trade to advance imperial objectives has been a common Western tactic. In the 1940s and 1950s, the French utilized opium crops in the “Golden Triangle” region of Southeast Asia in order to counter the growing Vietnamese independence movement.

A century previously, the British used opium to crush and conquer much of China. Britain’s insatiable thirst for Chinese tea was beginning to bankrupt the country, seeing as China would only accept gold or silver in exchange. The British, therefore, used the power of its navy to force China to cede Hong Kong to it. From there, it flooded mainland China with opium grown in South Asia (including Afghanistan).

The effect of the Opium War was astonishing. By 1880, the British were inundating China with more than 6,500 tons of opium per year – the equivalent of many billions of doses. Chinese society crumbled, unable to deal with the empire-wide social and economic dislocation that millions of opium addicts brought. Today, the Chinese continue to refer to the period as the “century of humiliation”.

Meanwhile, in South Asia, the British forced farmers to plant poppy fields instead of edible crops, causing waves of giant famines, the likes of which had never been seen before or since.

And during the 1980s in Central America, the United States sold weapons to Iran in order to fund far-right Contra death squads. The Contras were deeply implicated in the cocaine trade, fuelling their dirty war through crack cocaine sales in the U.S. – a practice that, according to journalist Gary Webb, the Central Intelligence Agency facilitated.

Imperialism and illicit drugs, therefore, commonly go together. However, with the Taliban opium eradication effort in full effect, coupled with the uniquely American phenomenon of opioid addiction, it is possible that the United States will suffer significant blowback in the coming years. The deadly fentanyl epidemic will likely only get worse, needlessly taking hundreds of thousands more American lives. Thus, even as Afghanistan attempts to rid itself of its deadly drug addiction problem, its actions could precipitate an epidemic that promises to kill more Americans than any of Washington’s imperial endeavors to date.

Feature photo | Illustration by MintPress News

Alan MacLeod is Senior Staff Writer for MintPress News. After completing his PhD in 2017 he published two books: Bad News From Venezuela: Twenty Years of Fake News and Misreporting and Propaganda in the Information Age: Still Manufacturing Consent, as well as a number of academic articles. He has also contributed to FAIR.org, The Guardian, Salon, The Grayzone, Jacobin Magazine, and Common Dreams.

[expresswayimmigration]

Express Entry Draw | December 20, 2023

[jyndor]

lmao nancy almost slipped and called herself a victim in that clip on CNN, did you guys see that? right before she says the fbi should go spy on pro-palestine activists (namely muslim and arab americans of course, we've seen this play before). right before she says a lot of us are doing putin's bidding, as if the us sending so much weaponry to israel to commit genocide is making it harder to send weaponry to ukraine to fight russian imperialism but okay queen yes YOU are the victim here

[sw5w]

This is Too Close

STAR WARS EPISODE I: The Phantom Menace 01:47:03

[ertrunkenerwassergeist]

In regards to your Galahd World-building: how would having multiple jobs work, if that’s even a thing for the galakhari? Like could a weapon smith also be a seamstress? What about things like Storytelling and Hunting, are those mutually exclusive, or can someone do that but also be a craftsman or an apothecary or a fisherman of some kind?

Hi there, Anon!

That's a good question.

Galahkari have only one job (aka the thing they earn most of their money with/use to trade). But, as all people do, they have hobbies. So you could be a weapon smith and do fibre crafts as a hobby. Maybe that person will end up selling a few home made blankets because at some point they'll drown in them.

So not multiple jobs, but many Galahkari have hobbies that sometimes earns them a bit of money on the side.

Like, the Colophon are farmers, but some of them like to make alcohol. If they make enough, they sell it. If not, then they don't.

Hunting is a bit of a special case. Most Galahakri learn how to do it, so yes, someone can be an apothecary and go hunting for their own meat no problem. But mostly that's to feed them and their family/Clan and not to sell meat on a big scale.

Storytelling is also a fulltime job. They not only learn all the stories by heart and retell them for the people to hear, the people also come to them for advice. (Basically they're the wise people of the village) But even Storytellers need hobbies. So they can also make some jewellery for fun, or dye yarn, or make furniture or what have you.

I hope that makes sense. Hope you have a great day!