Canadian Immigration Minister Announced key steps to Improve Immigration System & reduce backlog

Sean Fraser- the immigration minister of Canada has emphasized on the ongoing work to fortify immigration system and decrease application backlogs. In the latest press release, the Minister has outlined the priorities, which includes concentration on addressing labour shortages, refining client experience, and reunifying families.

Canada is a leading immigration destination and its lenient immigration policies allows tens of thousands of immigrants to settle in Canada with family every year. Find out more about this latest update.

Immigration Minister highlighted the priorities

Canada is undoubtedly primary choice for individuals looking for immigration to a new country to work, study, and settle with their families.  On the other hand, immigration is also key for Canada in terms of helping companies thousands of vacant positions across the provinces and grow country’s economy.

Hence, the Immigration Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) constantly review, streamline and upgrade the immigration process in the best interest of the immigration applicants.

As part of above-mentioned plan, the Minister announced IRCC is eying to hire, up to 1,250 new employees by the end of the fall to upsurge application-processing capacity and handle the backlogs in the short term, while it take action to make the system more workable in the long term.

Results achieved from key steps taken

New hires, as well as support provided through the $85 million from the Economic and Fiscal Update 2021, have helped lessen wait times and return to pre-pandemic service standards for new clients in grave areas, including:

• Six-month service standard for the Express Entry permanent residence pathway,
• The 12-month service standard for family reunification through spousal sponsorship, and permanent resident cards. 

Record number of immigrants admitted

Last year, Canada set a historic record by admitting over 405,000 new permanent residents to Canada. Moreover, IRCC has a target to welcome more than 431,000 permanent residents this year, and it is well on its way to attain it, with around 275,000 admissions from January 1 to July 31—a number reached faster than in any preceding year.

Canada is also a leading destination for foreign students. In 2021, Canada finalized almost 560,000 study permit applications, surpassing past record from 2019 by 31%. IRCC is already outperforming that number this year, with nearly 360,000 study permits decided between January 1 and July 31, 2022, compared to about 306,000 finalized during the same period in 2021.

Focus on reducing backlog

The Immigration Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) is focusing on decreasing existing backlogs, which are the applications that have been in records longer than service standards.

At the end of July, nearly 54% of applications in records considered in backlog. The IRCC is targeting to process 80% of all new applications within these standards, accounting for expected delays in difficult cases.  

Constantly enhancing the immigration system will upsurge IRCC’s ability to lure top talent from across the globe, and help solve key labour shortages in sectors like healthcare, agriculture, tourism, transportation, and the skilled trades.

To keep stakeholders up to date on IRCC’s development toward decreasing the backlogs, it will publish monthly data on its website.

To know more and apply for immigration to Canada this year, you may call Visas Avenue Canada immigration expert on Toll-Free No. 78-18-000-777 or you can drop us an e-mail at info@visasavenue.com.

- Rajneesh Kumar