Canada aims 300,000 immigrants by Mar 2023; How will Indians benefit

The memo was drafted by Operations, Planning and Performance division of IRCC for a senior official.

A decision is a review of an application which is then approved, denied, or marked as incomplete. The citizenship target means that 300,000 approved applicants must take the oath of citizenship. The oath can be taken either in person or virtually.

Also Read: Canada Express Entry: How 30+ candidates can improve their CRS scores. 5 points

With 300,000 citizenship mark this fiscal, there is a significant increase from 2021-2022 target and the pre-pandemic targets of 2019-2020. In 2019-2020, 253,000 citizenship applications were processed, whereas in 2021-2022, 217,000 new citizens were welcomed. 

In March 2020, IRCC became unable to process most applications due to the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic as the department was only able to process paper applications that were mailed to a central location.

Canada has so far welcomed 116,000 new citizens this fiscal as compare to same period last year. In 2021, Canada had only sworn in 35,000 people as the country’s citizens. With the increased number of online applications, the processing time also increased. By last June, 413,000 applications were in the inventory.

To clear the backlog, the IRCC has hired 1,000 new staff members. Meanwhile, minors (those under the age of 18) will now be eligible to apply for citizenship online by the end of the year

Indian tops the list in every category of Canadian visas that include student, tourist, business and work permits and permanent residence applications. Also as per earlier report, when it comes to applying for permanent residency (PR) in Canada, India is in the leading position accounting for almost one-third of landings in 2021.

According to the country’s 2016 reports, Canada has some 1.4 million people of Indian descent, as reported by IANS. As per the report, last year, nearly 100,000 Indians moved to Canada under the Temporary Foreign Worker Program and around 130,000 got work permits under the International Mobility Program. During 2021-2022, over 210,000 permanent residents also acquired Canadian citizenship.

In September 2022, Canada’s high commissioner to India Cameron MacKay informed that Canada hopes to get back to normal visa processing times by end of 2022. “We process roughly 10,000 visas a week for Indian nationals and that is not fast enough,” he said.

The country saw a massive surge of 55% in visa application in the year 2022 as opposed to the number of visa application it got in 2019. Experts have cited the pandemic for the sudden surge in visa applications that has also cause the backlog.