IRCC to streamline application intake, to ensure a quicker processing time.
Canada’s immigration department, called Immigration Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC), has a new plan called “An Immigration System for Canada’s Future.” In this plan, they want to speed up the processing times for certain immigration programs and review how they work.
To do this, they will make sure that the number of people applying for a
program matches the number of spots available. This way, they hope to avoid
situations where people have to wait for many years because too many people want to join a program that doesn’t have enough space.
Making sure there’s a good balance between the number of people applying and the available spots will help applicants and their support networks plan better for their move to Canada. This way, when they arrive, it will be easier for them to settle in and become a part of the community.
TOO MANY APPLICATIONS FOR CERTAIN PROGRAMS.
The Parents and Grandparents Program (PGP) has a backlog of applications that started three years ago because of the pandemic. Even during the pandemic when there were travel restrictions and office closures, the immigration department (IRCC) kept accepting applications for the program.
Now, there are almost 100,000 people waiting to be processed for the PGP,
and as of 2023, the department is still working on applications from 2020.
The PGP lets Canadian citizens and permanent residents sponsor their parents and grandparents to live in Canada.
IMMIGRATION LEVEL PLANS 2024 – 2026.ย
Every year, Immigration Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) plans how many people they’ll accept as new permanent residents. The recent plan, released on November 1st, aims to bring in 485,000 new permanent residents in 2024 and 500,000 in both 2025 and 2026.
Canada’s immigration minister, Marc Miller, says this plan is meant to
help the country’s economy and workforce grow in a sustainable way. For
programs like the Parents and Grandparents Program (PGP) or the Provincial
Nominee Program (PNP), there’s a limit on how many applications IRCC will accept, and this limit is part of the plan.
However, for temporary programs like work or study permits and visitor
visas, there’s no set limit on how many applications they can get each year.
This lack of limit can sometimes cause a backlog of applications and slow down the processing time.
The Minister has mentioned that he doesn’t support putting a limit on how many international students can come to Canada to study.
AUDITOR GENERAL REPORT.
The Immigration Department (IRCC) is working on a plan to speed up the processing times for immigration applications. This plan comes after a report by Canadaโs Auditor General found that the processing times were often too long. The report suggests that IRCC should set realistic service standards for all permanent residency programs and focus on finishing older applications that are waiting.
The plan also includes using digital tools to help officers process
requests from around the world more efficiently. The department will adjust the
workload in regional offices to match their capacity, and they’re introducing Advanced Analytics to automate routine decisions without any bias.
This part of the plan is already underway. In September, IRCC announced
they would use Advanced Analytics more for processing certain permits, which
should help immigration officers by handling routine tasks, making it easier to manage applications.
CURRENT BACKLOG.
The Immigration Department (IRCC) wants to process 80% of all applications within a specific time frame they consider reasonable. The time frame depends on the type of applicationโExpress Entry applications should take about six months, while family sponsorship applications may take up to a year.
As of September 30, there were about 2,194,900 applications, and 928,000
of them were considered a backlog, meaning they hadn’t been processed within
the expected time. This is a slight improvement from the end of August when there were 2,198,000 applications.
In September, the largest number of backlogged applications (585,700) were
for temporary residence visas like work permits, study visas, and visitor visas. This number is an 18% increase from the data in August.