Measures and Plans were announced to bring back the CANADIAN Immigration system on track.
The Honorable Sean Fraser, Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship, on January 31st, 2022 announced measures to improve client experience and modernize the immigration system. In the Economic and Fiscal Update 2021, the Government of Canada had proposed $85 million in new funding to reduce application inventories.
Key take-ways:
Increasing the manpower by hiring approximately 500 processing staff to reduce the wait times.
Decisions on about half a million applications of permanent residence were made in the year 2021.
In this year, IRCC plans to increase the processing capacity and also make decisions on 147000 permanent residence applications in the first quarter of 2022 itself, thereby doubling the application size of what was done in 2021.
IRCC also plans to further digitise the permanent residents’ application portal so as to include more clients in 2022.
The transition from paper-based applications to online applications will reduce the covid related delays associated.
A new permanent resident application tracker is to be introduced in February 2022 for spouses and dependents to allow them to check their application status online easily.
Developed a portal to allow permanent residence applicants in Canada to finalize their process and receive their permanent residency cards without any in-person interaction
Use of advanced data analytics in application processing.
Canada will update the online processing times tool in the coming months to give clients more up to date information on how long the application will take to process.
Minister Fraser in the media release said
“Immigration benefits all Canadians—it helps grow our economy and strengthens our communities across the country. Many people are choosing Canada as the place to visit and build their future, and to ensure that we stay competitive, we have introduced concrete measures to make sure those who want to come to Canada have the client experience they deserve.”
With so many measures, it is evident that going ahead things will be better and smoother. All these will allow Canada to return to normal processing service standards soon.