Canada Aims to Grant PR to 30,000 Immigrants by March 2023

Canada Aims to Grant PR to 30,000 Immigrants by March 2023

CIC News reported that Canada aims to grant citizenship to 300,000 immigrants this fiscal year. A memo drafted by the Operations, Planning, and Performance division of IRCC (Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada) recommends that IRCC process a total of 285,000 decisions and 300,000 new citizens by March 31, 2023. 

A ‘decision’ is the name given to the review of an application, after which it is then approved, denied, or marked as incomplete. What this target means is that 300,000 approved applicants must take the oath of citizenship, either in person or virtually. 

The target of 300,000 citizenship for this fiscal is a significant increase from the targets for previous years. In 2019-2020, 253,000 citizenship applications were processed, whereas in 2021-2022, 217,000 new citizens were welcomed.  

Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, starting March 2020, IRCC became unable to process most applications. The department was only able to process paper applications that were mailed to a central location, and the number of decisions was greatly reduced as a result. 

This fiscal, Canada has so far welcomed 116,000 new citizens as compared to the same period last year. Canada had only sworn in 35,000 people as the country’s citizens in 2021. As the number of online applications increased, the processing time also went up. By last June, 413,000 applications were in the inventory. 

In a bid to clear the backlog, the IRCC has hired 1,000 new staff members. It is also reported that minors (those under the age of 18) will now be eligible to apply for citizenship online by the end of the year. 

India tops the list in every category of Canadian visas that include student, tourist, business and work permits and permanent residence applications. When it comes to applying for permanent residency (PR) in Canada, India is in the number one position accounting for almost one-third of landings in 2021. 

As per 2016 IANS reports, Canada has about 1.4 million people of Indian descent. The report further states that in 2021, nearly 100,000 Indians moved to Canada under the Temporary Foreign Worker Program and around 130,000 got work permits under the International Mobility Program. It was also noted that during 2021-2022, over 210,000 permanent residents also acquired Canadian citizenship. 

Canada’s high commissioner to India Cameron MacKay said in September 2022 that Canada is planning toward getting back to normal visa processing times by the end of 2022. In his words, “We process roughly 10,000 visas a week for Indian nationals and that is not fast enough.” 

There was an unprecedented surge of 55% in visa applications in the year 2022, when all countries opened up after the slowdown of the pandemic, as opposed to the number of visa applications received by Canada in 2019. This sudden surge is also responsible for the backlog in processing. 

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