Canada's Immigration update by Sean Fraser

On Aug 24, 2022, Sean Fraser, Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship visited Vancouver and discussed the steps on improving Canada's Immigration system and reducing the application backlogs while keeping the Immigration Level Plan in mind.

New Funding and Hiring Initiative

IRCC has taken new measures with the support of an additional funding of $85 million from Economic and Fiscal Update 2021.

• 1,250 new employees will be hired by fall-end to keep a hold of the backlogs.
• The new hire will help in reducing the backlog of applications and reduce the wait time to pre-pandemic service standards (For e.g., Express Entry- 6 months).

Updates on Applications from January 2022 - July 2022

Out of the total of 2.4 million applications that are in the backlog, 1.1 million applications are within standard time while the remaining are in backlog.

✔ Permanent Residence

Out of 639,500 total applications, around 303,300 applications (47%) are within service standards. With the target of inviting 431,000 permanent residents in 2022, around 275,000 permanent residents have already been welcomed in the first seven months.

✔ Temporary Residence

With 1.4 million applications in backlog, approximately 580,000 (41%) applications are within service standards. 349,000 Work Permits have been issued from Jan 2022 which includes over 220,000 open work permits (OWP). This means that every day around 1700 work permits is being issued. Since Jan 2022, around 360,000 Study permit applications have been approved.

✔ Citizenship

Out of 379,000 applications, almost 246,000 applications (65%) are within the service standard.

In order to keep everyone up to date, IRCC is also planning to release monthly data on its website.