2022 Was A Record-Breaking Year For Processing Immigration Applications
The IRCC highlighted this year’s efforts in clearing backlogs of immigration applications accumulated in its inventories past the limits of its service standards.
Processing year with a record
Since August 2022, the IRCC has reduced about 500,000 immigration applications from its entire inventory. The IRCC had processed 4.8 million applications at the end of November 2022, compared to 2.5 million applications proceeding at the same period in 2021.
To increase processing efficiency while ensuring the safety and security of Canadians, the IRCC has digitized applications, hired, and trained more employees, streamlined processes, and embraced automation technologies. The IRCC is on track to meet its goal of processing 80% of new immigration applications within service standards for numerous programs. As a result, immigrants are seeing shorter wait times.
IRCC’s efforts to modernize
Since the beginning of the year, the COVID-19 pandemic-related travel bans and office closures have resulted in a significant backlog of immigration applications that IRCC has been attempting to manage.
The IRCC has responded by adjusting to address operational inefficiencies such as the digitization of applications. To speed up the application processing process, the department also declared in August 2022 that it would hire 1,250 more employees by the end of the year.
Canada intends to accept the most immigrants ever
By the end of 2025, the Immigration Levels Plan 2023–2025 seeks to welcome and accept over 500,000 new permanent residents to Canada annually.
The nation is currently attempting to fill critical labour force deficits, hence the high objective. By 2030, up to nine million Canadians could be of retirement age, and there won’t be enough native-born citizens to fill the jobs that will become available as a result.
The IRCC has put up a variety of initiatives over the past year to boost the number of immigrants entering Canada. For instance, the IRCC has lowered the 20-hour work limit for international students and extended work licences to spouses and dependent children of temporary foreign employees who are of working age.
Temporary residence: bringing more visitors, students, and workers to Canada
IRCC continues to reduce backlogs and process visitor visas more quickly to respond to the growing number of people who want to visit Canada. Every month, Canada is processing more visitor visa applications than before the pandemic. In November alone, over 260,000 visitor visas were processed. By contrast, the monthly average in 2019 was about 180,000 immigration applications.
Canada is on track to break records for the processing of study permits in 2022. IRCC has processed more than 670,000 study permits as of November 30, 2022, compared to more than 500,000 at the same time the previous year. As a result of these initiatives, most new study permits are now handled within the 60-day service standard.
With approximately 700,000 work permits processed by November 30, 2022, compared to about 223,000 during the same period in 2019, before the pandemic, there were also significant advances in processing work permits.
Permanent residence: improving service and reuniting spouses and families
Four hundred five thousand new permanent residents arrived in Canada in 2021, exceeding the previous record of 1913. Canada is still on track to meet its goal of adding more than 431,000 new permanent residents after another record year in 2022.
IRCC has also been updating its services and extending assistance for programs granting permanent residency to serve immigrants better. All new immigration applications for Spousal Sponsorship and Express Entry are processed within the pre-pandemic service norm of 12 months and six months, respectively. Due to IRCC’s reduction of the pandemic backlog of applications for card renewals by 99%, permanent residents can also anticipate lower wait times when renewing their permanent residence cards.
How Can We Assist You?
At ARNIKA VISA, we help you to find the most tailored strategy to achieve your immigration goals. From filing the immigration forms to guiding you through supporting documents, we take care of it all. We can assist you entirely or partially based on our different packages.
We can advise you professionally regarding the required personalized supporting documents to increase the chance of your approval and, finally, submit your application to IRCC on your behalf as an authorized representative. Suppose you want to discover how the RCIC can help you. In that case, the first step is to complete the Assessment Form (To detail your personal, educational, and employment information) available on the site.
