The immigration minister made an announcement on April 22 regarding the reopening of applications for CEC and FSWP
The applications for FSWP and CEC will soon start to be released in the early days of July.
He also made an announcement regarding the extension of the open work permit for up to one and a half years.
ALL MAJOR ANNOUNCEMENTS
- The applications for FSWP and CEC are set to begin in the month of July.
- The actual processing time for applications of Express Entry was ranging from 7 to 20 months, which will now be brought down to its ideal processing time of 6 months.
- PGWP holders on the verge of expiration of their tenure from January and December, this year will be given an additional period of one and a half years. The IRCC is still working to execute it from the beginning of the summer. As the IRCC has been observing that nearly the tenure of 95,000 PGWP holders is going to expire this year and extending the tenure could benefit around 50,000 PGWP holders.
- Immigration applicants need not stay in the country while their applications are under processing.
- Applicants applying for an open work permit and simultaneously waiting for their Canadian permanent residence applications will be granted the work permit with a validity of 2 years which is 2024.
- As the Canadian Government supports family reunification, the dependent family member accompanying the applicant to Canada will be granted an open work permit.
EXPRESS ENTRY SYSTEM
Express Entry is a tool for managing the applications of FSWP, FSTP, and CEC. The applications for Express Entry are evaluated based on the scores of their Comprehensive Ranking System. The scores are counted on the basis of various factors like education, work experience, and many others.
Pre a pandemic the IRCC would only invite Applicants ranking among the top list to apply for immigration. Matching the eligibility criteria was not required before the pandemic.
Only CEC candidates were invited before the pandemic. A majority of CEC candidates reside in the country; thus, they do not have to witness many travel restrictions during 2020-2021. More than four lakh permanent residents landed in the country the previous year. This has set up a record in the immigration history of Canada.
The IRCC also didn’t stop releasing the applications for PNP candidates during the pandemic to accomplish its immigration target.
All the above factors lead to a huge backlog in the immigration system of Canada. As there were no applications released for categories of CEC and FSWP since the end of the last year.
As a result of no applications for CEC and FSWP, there immerged a big labor shortage in Canada, the rate of unemployment was at its lowest while the rate of active job openings was at the highest.
The majority of CEC candidates are international scholars who have graduated from DLI and reside in the country with a post-graduation work permit. The PGWP provides a work experience of a year to the graduates, which can further be used for getting Canadian permanent residency.
This work permit can only be issued once to an applicant in their entire lifetime. Candidates unable to complete the permanent residency procedure while holding this work permit may lose the status of their work permit and certainly have to search for another work permit to stay in the country.
Since ITAs are not being released, the candidates lying in the category of CEC are losing their status of Work permit. This means they won’t get the opportunity to apply for a Bridging Open Work Permit while their application for Canadian permanent residency is processed. The BOWP is a connecting bridge for candidates whose tenure of work permit is soon to be retired and who have applied for Canadian permanent residency. This gives them the power to work in Canada while their application is still in processing.
In the first quarter of 2021, the IRCC gave the opportunity to PGWP holders to work for 18 months. The purpose behind this policy was to give the PGWP holders more time to stay in the country to gather work experience which can be further utilized for Canadian permanent residency.
Since 1967, the FSWP was the major category through which most of the immigrants under the skilled worker category were landing in Canada till the IRCC decided to shift its focus to processing the applications of CEC. This caused a very low number of skilled immigrants entering the country although the requirement for skilled labor was at its peak because of the growing population of Canada.
The target of the IRCC this year is to invite 55,000 permanent residents which is equal to half of the immigrants landing in the country in the previous year. The reason for lowering the immigration targets is to focus more on the applications of TR2PR. A total of ninety thousand immigrants under the category of TR2PR were invited between May and November 2021.
Considering the immigration levels plan 2022-2024, the number of Express Entry applications will increase and the IRCC aims to invite a larger number of Express Entry immigrants of 1,10,000 by 2024.
Although there can be seen a massive decline in the number of backlog applications which were around 1,12,000 pending in September 2021 and further reduced to 48,000 pending applications in the previous month. The backlog rate has been controlled to its half. Whereas the number of completed applications in the first quarter of this year for Canadian permanent residents has increased up to two times as compared to the same period of last year.
A total of 1,56,000 applications for Canadian permanent residents have been completed from the beginning of this year till now. Also, a total of one lakh applications for a work permit were processed in the first three months of this year, which were only 58,000 applications during the same period of last year.
