The Canadian Government states that its immigration backlog has increased by more than 2.1M applications
The IRCC has processed the following number of applications from last summer
- From April 30 to May 2 – A total of 21,30,385 applications were processed
- From April 11 to April 12 – A total of 20,31,589 applications were processed
- On the first day of February, this year – a total of 18,15,628 applications were processed
- On 15th December, last year – a total of 18,13,144 applications were processed
- On 27th October, last year – a total of 17,92,404 applications were processed
- On 6th July, last year – a total of 14,47,474 applications were processed
Processing of applications
There has been a massive increase of 98,796 pending applications within 18 days from 11th April to 29th April.
The major proportion of pending applications was from the category of temporary residents.
In those 18 days, the number of pending applications for the Permanent Residence category also increased by 638.
Although there has been a decline in the number of Citizenship applications. From 12th April to 2nd May, the IRCC had successfully processed a total of 258 applications in this category
Data on backlogs from the last year
The table below shows how the pending applications of temporary residents have increased within a time span of 2 years.
The number of pending applications accounted to be 4,10,000 before the pandemic and the latest data accounts for 5,30,000 pending applications.
The number of pending applications for the temporary resident category has increased by two times within a year.
Whereas the number of pending applications for the Citizenship category counted to be 2,40,000 but significantly grew to 4,00,000. The IRCC struggled to manage the processing of applications during COVID-19 as the country had travel restrictions and had to follow social distancing.
Although the number of pending applications has increased the number of pending applications under the category of Express Entry has declined by 4,292 from the last month.
A reduction in the number of pending applications to process will lead to better management of all program draws which will be conducted in the early days of July.
There have been no immigrants welcomed in the country belonging to the FSWP category for the last 2 years.
Pre pandemic, this category was the main resort to Express Entry. But now the IRCC will issue ITAs to immigrants belonging to the category of Canadian Experience Class.
The IRCC did not invite any immigrants from this category because of the increased processing time of 6 months. But presently, the IRCC had claimed to process the applications according to its ideal processing time which is 180 days.
The pending applications for the Canadian permanent resident category declined as many applicants had transitioned to Permanent Residents from Temporary residents.
Although there has been a minimal increase in the applications of the Family Class category, Humanitarian and Compassionate Category. There has been an incline in the number of pending applications from all the categories of temporary residents from 11th April to 29th April.
CUAET
One of the reasons which constitute an increase in the number of pending applications was the introduction of a new program specifically for the people of Ukraine, named Canada Ukraine Authorization for Travel.
The program has been specially formulated for impacted Ukraine members to enter Canada with a status of temporary resident.
The IRCC got a total of 2,04,227 applications from the people of Ukraine under this category.
Whereas since the beginning of this year, a total of 24,645 people from Ukraine have entered Canada under this program.
The IRCC finds it difficult to process applications with an already pile of pending applications.
New provisions
By the start of this year, the immigration minister had introduced provisions to tackle this problem by switching to a high-tech processing system and increasing its workforce.
A dedicated team has been assigned to analyze all the loopholes regarding the increasing number of backlog applications, named The Canadian Parliament’s Committee on Citizenship and Immigration. Soon an in-depth written report will be made available to the masses, demonstrating the reasons to control it.
