In an interview as a minister of Canadian Immigration, Sean Fraser spoke with Shelly Hagan of Bloomberg and Nicholas Keung of the Toronto Star to talk about the benefits and challenges of the new role as the minister of Canadian minister.
While speaking to Shelly, Fraser said he is ready to increase Canada’s immigration levels if required in order to address the labor shortages. The country is currently experiencing a significant job shortage because of fewer immigrants coming in from abroad due to the pandemic.
At the moment the country is continuing its pretensions Immigration levels Plan in history as it is aiming towards welcoming 401,000 immigrants this year, another 411,000 next year, and for 2023 421,000.
“Very much to open” as Fraser stated in the interview, for the business and communities if there are more workers.
The immigration levels plan 2022-2024 will be addressed on February 10th ,2022.
October landing of 46,000, who are also from Canada.
Fraser disclosed that the country is on track to achieve the target of 401,000 immigrants this year.
Data from the IRCC was gathered by Bloomberg that showed 43,315 new permanent residents have already arrived in the month of October, and in September 45,000 more landed. The numbers show the monthly record of Canada.
The term lading refers to the permanent residents of Canada, or an individual living abroad who has their immigration status converted to PR of Canada. The current temporary residents of Canada are the larger part that arrived during the pandemic. This helps in understanding the reason behind Canada’s labor force growth and a weak population. Canada witnessed the weakest growth in population last year which was just 0.5%. Generally, new PR landings from abroad come to Canada, under ordinary conditions.
Recently the country as welcomed 313,838 immigrants between the months of January and October 2021. The country still needs to land around 87,000 more in order to achieve the target and it has to be done in the remaining two months.
That Opportunities and challenges that the immigration system is facing
“There is no shortage of challenges ahead of me,” Fraser said very vaguely in his interview with the Toronto Star on the existing obstacles that are there.
“I don’t want to communicate to you today that in a short period of time, all of these problems will be fixed. They weren’t made overnight and they won’t be fixed overnight. I want to accelerate the work that’s going to help clear some of these backlogs. It’s going to make the process less painful for families that are trying to pursue a new life or reunite with their loved ones or find a job to contribute to our economy.” Fraser stated while discussing the backlog of 1.8 million immigration applications.
He also said that citizenship applications will be digitized and that IRCC is going to address these issues that are slowing down the immigration system. For instance, he said that this does not make sense to deny the families of temporary residents who are waiting for their sponsorship to be processed.
The focus behind Fraser becoming the minister is to help settle the Afghan refugees. The federal government is dedicated to resettling the 40,000 refugees of Afghan but has only managed to settle down 3,500 as of now. He also said “Canadians are right to be frustrated about what’s going on in Afghanistan. The reality on the ground right now is that we don’t have access the way we did in Syria, and that’s the equation that a lot of Canadians I think are trying to make.”
Regardless of this, Fraser sees a huge opportunity lying in front of him in order to improve the immigration system.
“Things are at such a strained point as a result of COVID-19 that I see an opportunity to make an extraordinary difference coming from this particular starting point.”
