An internal IRCC briefing memo was released to the public last week, which led to confusion and speculation on how Canada is going to proceed with the immigration applications under the Express Entry System in 2022 and forward.
The IRCC briefing was signed on November 24, 2021, and it offers background information on the reasons for no Express Entry invitations being issued by the federal department of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) to candidates under two of its federal programs. These federal programs are:
- The Federal Skilled Worker Program (FSWP) candidates: No invitations have been issued to these candidates since December 2020.
- The Canadian Experience Class (CEC) candidates: No invitations have been issued to candidates since September last year.
As the briefing is extensively censored, no definite results can be drawn. Though the briefing is obscure, it suggests that the temporary suspension on these applications is put in place so that IRCC can work towards reducing application backlogs and gradually reach the standard processing times of Express Entry applications within six months. Currently, the processing times are longer, and the immigration department plans on catching up with the pre-pandemic pace. This memo should be viewed as a follow-up to another IRCC memo, which was released in the fall of 2021.
The newer IRCC memo suggested that the Express Entry backlogs have increased for various reasons, including the COVID travel restrictions as well as the IRCC’s focus shifted to transitioning of candidates who are already in Canada to permanent residents, so the department can achieve the goal of landing 401,000 new permanent residents in 2021. In order to achieve the immigration levels goal last year, the federal immigration department issued a significant number of invitations to apply (ITAs) to the CEC candidates, and they also introduced a special Temporary Residence to Permanent Residence (TR to PR) pathway. As the department shifted its focus to in-Canada applications, it eventually impacted the candidates who submitted their Express Entry applications from outside of Canada, and these candidates had to wait longer for the processing of their applications.
Express Entry admissions are expected to “see a significant reduction to accommodate other ministerial and departmental goals,” says the IRCC, as the department is continuously analyzing the options for its Immigration Levels Plan 2022-2024. When the memo was discussed, some preliminary scenarios proposed cuts of more than half of the 110,500 admissions. Those admissions were allocated in the 2021-2023 levels plan. The memo suggests that the cut in the number of admissions may be needed in order to facilitate admissions under the TR to PR pathway, and also, the federal government aims to admit 40,000 Afghan refugees. By February 14, 2022, the new immigration levels plan will be made public.
“Invitations” and “admissions” for Express Entry are two distinct criteria.
The IRCC memo has not clarified how soon Express Entry draws for FSWP, FSTP, and CEC candidates will resume. The memo says that by the start of this year, the department will already have an estimated number of 76,000 Express Entry applications on the inventory, and this number is already greater than what IRCC needs to meet the admission targets. So, as a result, the department will not need any new Express Entry applicants for at least the first six months of 2022. However, it is still unclear if IRCC is referring to “invitations” or “intakes” here. Both terms can be further described as candidates have 60 days to submit their permanent residency application to IRCC after receiving an invitation, and when IRCC gets the full application, it is called “intake.”
Prior to considering to resume and expand the Express Entry draws, the federal government plans to reduce the applications backlogs by about 50 percent or more. The rationale behind this is that IRCC wants to guarantee quicker processing times for applications of candidates who have been invited. Considering the department’s recent ability to process more than 16,000 Express Entry applications in a month, it is expected that the IRCC may be able to complete more than half of the backlogs within a few months in 2022. Thus, from a technical perspective, IRCC can resume sending out invitations to the candidates under all three federal immigration programs, considering that it will take two more months before the department receives a new intake.
The upcoming announcement in February regarding the immigration levels plan will provide better insight into the IRCC’s strategy. As the federal department of IRCC continues to examine a variety of operational and policy concerns up until the very last minute, the levels plan is regularly changed leading up to its official announcement. This leads us to the probability that the IRCC’s Express Entry plan has changed since the November 2021 memo.
Admissions and invitations are two different metrics; thus, it is crucial to understand that IRCC possibly reducing Express Entry admissions this year does not conclude that the department will cease issuing invitations to the Express Entry candidates.
In the Express Entry process, admission is the last stage, and due to the backlog of applications, it presently takes a minimum of one year to complete the whole process. As mentioned in the memo, currently, the CEC applications are processed in around eight months, and it takes about 20 months to process the FSWP applications; however, when referred to the IRCC’s website, it still shows a standard processing time of six months for these applications.
Admission includes a series of steps starting once the Express Entry candidate receives an ITA for permanent residence, followed by the submission of the complete application, and then the processing of the application. The admission is considered completed when the foreign national arrives in Canada and lands as a permanent resident. Moreover, it can also indicate that a temporary resident in Canada has transitioned to a permanent resident.
Considering the longer processing times, IRCC continues to send out Express Entry invitations to the candidates in the meanwhile. Once the IRCC receives a complete application, then the department can take a call to either process the application instantly, as it used to before the pandemic, or it can process the application at a later date, as the department is doing now to cope with the changing pandemic situation and different policies.
The rationale for prioritizing resuming FSWP and CEC Express Entry invitations
Resuming Express Entry invitations to the CEC and FSWP candidates sooner than later will align with Canada’s policy interests.
Express Entry System was established in 2015 with the goal of sending out invitations to the highest-scoring candidates to apply for permanent resident status in Canada. Because IRCC only had to process the applications of individuals, it invites rather than every application it receives, its dynamic design intended to eliminate backlogs.
The federal Express Entry System was introduced in 2015 with the goal of issuing invitations to apply to the highest-scoring candidates to apply for Canadian permanent residency. The dynamic nature of Express Entry intended to eliminate backlogs, as IRCC only had to process the applications of invited candidates rather than every application it received. However, the backlogs have grown over the past months, as the immigration department has shifted all its attention and resources in transitioning those candidates to permanent residents who are already within Canada and the processing of applications for Afghan refugees as well.
When the Express Entry was launched in 2015, the IRCC argued that scoring and ranking candidates using the Comprehensive Ranking System (CRS) was the best way to assess and identify potential immigration candidates, as the top-scoring candidates stand better chances of integrating into Canada’s economy. Decades of research by Statistics Canada set up the foundation of the CRS, and this is considered as a scientific method of identifying the potential immigrations to Canada. Thus, this can be concluded that using the CRS as the primary criterion to issue invitations to Express Entry candidates aligns best with Canada’s interest. One can call for a debate that Canada currently needs to stick to the CRS during a period of economic uncertainty because Statistics Canada research also indicates that immigrants who arrive in Canada during a recession have relatively poor economic outcomes throughout their careers compared to those who land in Canada in better economic situations.
Furthermore, another argument in favour of maintaining the CRS can be made justified on the basis of fairness. Starting 2015 until 2020, the immigration department sent out a significant number of Express Entry invitations on the basis of CRS scores but stopped doing so in January 2021 with no advance notice. There are many candidates who entered the Express Entry pool after taking required actions to enhance their CRS score or might have already put in a lot of efforts to improve their CRS score after entering the pool; all of their efforts have now gone waste as the IRCC changed its priorities and immigration strategies without any warning (The federal department of IRCC has been silent on its Express Entry plans for 2022).
Since IRCC’s new strategy to speed up the processing of CEC applications while halting FSWP and other applications, the growth in the Express Entry backlog was avoidable. In the latter half of 2021, the federal department of IRCC was processing about 14,000 applications for CEC every month, and on the other hand, only 600 FSWP applications were processed per month in this period.
The backlog of applications from FSWP and other programs for skilled foreign workers is becoming costly, as it is causing population, labour force, and economic growth to weaken. Currently, the population growth in Canada is at its lowest level since 1915-16. Moreover, the country is coping with the largest employment vacancy rate in history, with around 1 million job positions vacant. Many of the sectors in the country’s economy are in dire need of more workforce; these sectors are health care, transportation, agri-food, and others. This can be concluded that the country needs to soon resume the processing of applications of skilled foreign workers, as Canada is struggling with workforce shortage and bringing skilled workers from overseas is the country’s only way out to meet the workforce requirements.
Moreover, CEC draws have been delayed since September last year, and this is a trouble to both country and candidates from economic and fairness standpoints. CEC candidates are more likely to work for Canadian employers and can stay with them indefinitely once they obtain permanent residency through Express Entry. Due to the lack of draws for CEC candidates, the legal status of such candidates will be at risk in the country, which will eventually force them to leave Canada. This would result in the weakening of economic activity in Canada, as well as add to the labour shortages and stress on companies in the country. From a fairness standpoint, it would be unfair to suddenly change the priorities and immigration strategies and ask these candidates to leave the country even after their years of contribution to Canada’s economy and society.
