Believe it or not, Canada is ramping up their immigration program to admit up to 90,000 permanent residents to this beautiful nation. Even after launching an ambitious program, they are hinting at the likelihood of increasing that cap.
The Immigration minister mentioned that the department will first assess the early results of this new program. Not only the quality of the applications but also how fast the target of 90,000 admissions is reached will be their priority. Hence, after such assessments take place, he says there will more clarity regarding the caps.
The new temporary program started on May 6th and has received strong support from prospective permanent residents.
Notably, out of the six segments under this program, the one for international graduates, reached the maximum applications i.e. 40,000 in around 24 hours. Until now, two other segments that focus on essential workers and health care workers have received applications. Around 10,000 applications out of a total cap of 50,000 applications for this category. On the other hand, three segments targeting French-speaking or bilingual candidates have received lesser applications. Probably, the reason behind this is that there is no cap and applications will close in November 2021.
Of course, these new policies are taken up to support the post-coronavirus economic recovery. Canada has taken up a multi-layered approach to counter Covid-19’s impact and the new permanent residency program is a part of it. Thus, with this program, they aim to achieve the highest levels of immigration ever seen in their history.
In fact, the pandemic has impacted capacity and processing times for permanent residence applications. This has led to the Canadian government adopting new strategies to address such issues.
Additionally, Canada is planning to modernize the immigration processing system. This is on top of their plan to increase and issue invitations to prospective immigrants via the Express Entry system recently.
Decidedly, Canada is budgeting $430 million for creating a new and improved digital platform. This will replace the Global Case Management System which processes citizenship and immigration applications. The goal is to increase efficiency and ensure timely processing.
Evidently, Canada hopes to welcome at least 401,000 immigrants each year, and the latest figures reflect that they might be quite close to their goals. The IRCC (Immigration, Refugees, and Citizenship Canada) released data that Canada accepted 70,000 new immigrants in the first quarter of 2021. Compared to earlier figures of 30,000 to 40,000, this is significantly higher.
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