Canada Restores Express Entry Points for High-Wage Job Offers, Opening a New Route for H-1B Workers Stuck in the Green Card Line

Canada will again give permanent-residence ranking points for job offers starting Nov. 3, but only in high-wage occupations, and employers will no longer need a labour market impact assessment for those offers to count. The change, announced Oct. 16 by Immigration Minister Lena Metlege Diab, reaches well beyond Canada: it targets the same engineers, software developers and other skilled professionals whose U.S. green card prospects have narrowed sharply this month.

For an H-1B worker born in India, the contrast is stark. The State Department’s October 2026 Visa Bulletin lists a final action date of Nov. 1, 2013, for India-born EB-2 applicants and Jan. 1, 2014, for EB-3, so only people whose priority dates are nearly 13 years old can be approved for green cards now. Mainland China-born EB-2 applicants are at Oct. 1, 2021. Express Entry, which manages Canada’s main skilled-worker programs, ranks candidates by points and invites the top scorers to apply for permanent residence.

Job offer points return, with a wage test

Job offers have earned no Express Entry points since spring 2025. Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada called that cut a temporary anti-fraud step, meant to stop the buying and selling of labour market impact assessments, the employer-side labour test a job offer generally required. The points now return only where the occupation’s median wage is at least 1.3 times the national median. The test looks at the occupation, not the candidate’s own pay, and IRCC will publish the qualifying list.

The offer must be for full-time, continuous work lasting at least a year after the candidate becomes a permanent resident, and an officer must find it genuine. A temporary public policy also drops the labour test when a job offer is used to qualify for the Federal Skilled Worker or Federal Skilled Trades programs. Candidates already in the pool must update job offer details before Nov. 3, and invitation rounds will pause for up to two weeks while scores are recalculated. IRCC stresses that higher scores do not guarantee an invitation.

For workers in the U.S., the job offer is the lever

The new experience bonus requires 12 months of work in Canada, so a developer who has spent a decade in Seattle or Austin gains nothing from it. For someone still in the United States, the job offer is what counts, and dropping the labour test removes the slowest, costliest step a Canadian employer faced. The effect is likely to show first at companies with offices on both sides of the border, which can offer an existing employee a Canadian role worth up to 100 points without first proving that no Canadian could fill it.

Demand is not hypothetical. When Canada opened a work permit for U.S. H-1B holders in July 2023, the 10,000-application cap filled within two days, according to an IRCC briefing note to Parliament; by Sept. 30 that year it had received about 14,200 applications, including family members, and approved about 6,100. That was a temporary permit. This is a route to permanent residence.

The timing sharpens the comparison. On the U.S. side, the Labor Department has suspended green card labor certifications at eight large employers, and on Oct. 14 DHS proposed ending the rule that tells officers to defer to earlier approvals when an H-1B or L-1 worker is extended in the same job. DHS says that change would “better protect the interests of U.S. workers” and improve the integrity of the system. Microsoft President Brad Smith has warned that cutting off green card access for foreign professionals could hurt American technology companies for decades, Quartz reported, citing an interview with Politico.

Moving need not mean forfeiting a U.S. place in line. Under 8 CFR 204.5(e), an approved I-140 generally keeps its priority date after the worker leaves the sponsoring employer, unless the approval is revoked for fraud, willful misrepresentation or material error, though using it later requires a new U.S. sponsor. And because H-1B status allows immigrant intent, building a Canadian profile does not by itself endanger U.S. status.

The open question is scale. Much depends on IRCC’s high-wage occupation list, on how large the first invitation rounds are after the pause, and on whether the labour-test exemption, which IRCC calls temporary, is renewed when it lapses. Diab said on Oct. 16, CTV News reported, that Canada’s updated immigration levels plan is coming “in November as it’s scheduled.” That plan will show how much room the system has for the people these points are designed to attract.

This article is for general information and is not legal advice.

Sources

• IRCC: Canada refocusing Express Entry on top talent that drives economic growth (Oct. 16, 2026)
• IRCC backgrounder: Changes to Express Entry for high-wage occupations (Oct. 16, 2026)
• IRCC: Canada takes action to reduce fraud in Express Entry system (December 2024)
• IRCC briefing note to the House of Commons immigration committee: Open work permit for H-1B visa holders (Nov. 7, 2023; figures as of Sept. 30, 2023)
• U.S. State Department: Visa Bulletin for October 2026
• Federal Register: Removing Deference to Prior USCIS Determinations of Eligibility (proposed rule, Oct. 14, 2026)
• Quartz: Microsoft’s Brad Smith warns Trump green card push risks U.S. tech (Oct. 16, 2026)
• CTV News via CP24: Immigration minister says levels will be going up (Oct. 16, 2026)

About the Author

Vasanth Vaidyanathan, Esq.

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Vasanth Vaidyanathan is an immigration attorney with over 20 years of experience focused exclusively on U.S. immigration and nationality law. He holds a LL.M. from California Western School of Law, San Deigo and advises individuals and businesses on employment and family-based immigration matters, including H-1B, PERM, EB categories, and adjustment of status. He has also been a featured speaker at immigration seminars across the U.S. To reach Vasanth visit: https://www.vnathan.com/

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