Canada Immigration: On The Work To Improve Immigration Processing Time

Sean Fraser, Immigration Minister of Canada has generated plans to get the country’s immigration system back on its track. In the 2021 Budget, a total of $85 million was allocated by Canada to be able to reduce the processing times across all the lines of business of the Immigration, Refugees, and Citizenship Canada (IRCC). In connection to this, from the mandate letter of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, he has called on the attention of Fraser to also reduce the processing time. With the budget, Canada will now be able to return the standard processing service for study permits, work permits as well as permanent resident card renewals by the end of the year. Also, Canadian immigration is working to reduce the processing times for visitor visas and proof of citizenship as well.

As announced by the IRCC Minister – Sean Fraser, Canada is planning to make a total of 147,000 permanent residence final decisions in the first quarter of this year. In addition to this, by February, Canada will also introduce a new Permanent Residence Tracker for spouses as well as dependents to allow the applicants to see the information and status of their applications online.

As stated in a memo released on November 24, the IRCC was expecting the processing time for Foreign Skilled Worker Program (FSWP) to take 20 months, way longer than the standard processing time of only six months for the Express Entry managed program. The same memo states that the processing was expected to be almost 8 months for Canadian Experience Class (CEC) candidates. It was also suggested in the memo that the Express Entry draws would not invite candidates from the FSWP and CEC category for the first half of 2022. However, IRCC Minister Sean Fraser did not mention any date as to when these draws would resume. However, he said that the measures introduces aim to speed up Canada’s immigration process.

Currently, Canadian immigration is facing a backlog of more than 1.8 million people, all are waiting for decisions. These backlogs include citizenship applicants, temporary foreign workers, families, students, refugees as well as visitors. As of December 2021, the backlog for Express Entry alone stands at about 119,000 immigration applicants. Meanwhile, for the candidates of Express Entry in Canada who may have to either leave their job or Canada while the IRCC holds off its draws for certain candidates, IRCC Minister Fraser mentioned that the immigration department is now looking at options to keep the said workers in Canada, however, they are still yet to come up with a perfect solution.