The federal government has instructed visa officers reviewing applications of would-be immigrants to Canada to fast-track applicants with skills to fill 38 high-demand occupations, Immigration Minister Jason Kenney said Friday.

In a release, Kenney announced the details of the highly contested reforms to Canada's immigration system, which were passed into law during the previous Parliament, despite fierce objections from opposition critics and several immigrant groups.

The Tories have said the speeding up of paperwork for specific immigration applicants will benefit skilled workers in more than three dozen fields, including health care, skilled trades, finance and resource extraction.

Kenney said the measures taken to improve the federal immigration system "will help ensure that Canada remains competitive internationally and responsive to labour market needs domestically."

The government's 2009 immigration targets — between 240,000 and 265,000 new permanent residents — will be roughly the same as this year, he said.

But Kenney said the reforms, which are retroactive to applications filed as of February of this year, will seriously reduce the wait for the processing of coveted workers to between six and 12 months from the current five to six years.

The 2009 plan includes up to 156,600 immigrants in the economic category, 71,000 in the family category and 37,400 in the humanitarian category.

System creates 2 classes of immigrants: critics

Critics of the reforms said that while the changes might help some segments of the economy, they would create two classes of immigrants, which would leave less-skilled workers permanently stuck at the back of the queue.

But despite vocal condemnation of the Tories' proposals, the Liberals allowed the measures to pass in a budget implementation bill last spring in order to avoid triggering a federal election.

The government has said it had to implement the changes after previous Liberal governments allowed the immigration backlog to grow from 50,000 to more than 800,000, with waiting times longer than five years.

The eligibility criteria will apply only to new federal skilled worker applicants and will not affect Canada's family reunification or refugee protection goals, Kenney said Friday.

Other candidates who don't qualify for the skilled worker category can still qualify for immigration under another category, including the provincial nominee program and the temporary foreign worker program, which can put them on the path for permanent residency, he added.

"There are many ways to immigrate to Canada," the minister said.

With files from the Canadian Press