The immigration minister of Canada visited the Canadian Parliament’s Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration to look into their research regarding the backlog of applications, and delayed processing time by the IRCC.
Federal Government officials are the representatives of the committee. Their role is to look into the policy matters of immigration and refugees. The committee also conducts research to formulate immigration policies.
Sean Fraser was asked to join the research regarding the backlog applications on behalf of IRCC.
The number of backlog applications stands at 2.1 million across various categories like permanent residency, citizenship, etc.
Pending temporary resident applications have increased by two folds within twelve months, all because of the introduction of CUEAT.
PROCESSING TIME TO BE CORRECTED BY 2023
The immigration minister mentioned that the processing time of all immigration programs is likely to return to its ideal processing time by the end of this year. He had promised to process immigration applications in accordance with its ideal time definitely by the start of next year.
The actual time taken by the IRCC to process immigration applications is known to be the processing standards. The processing standard may not coincide with the ideal processing time period.
As a response to this problem, the IRCC hired an additional workforce of 11,000 people to process the applications at a faster pace. The government also switched to more use of advanced technology.
He had claimed that the allocation of $827 million in funds has a higher probability of transitioning the immigration system of Canada to a great extent. The IRCC had already processed a total of 1,56,000 pending applications for Canadian Permanent Residency this year.
The IRCC has separately allocated $85 million in funds to accelerate the processing time of certain categories. Daniel Mills, who is the Assistant Deputy Minister of Operations claimed that the processing time for PR card renewal was 4 months at the end of the last year but presently it has come down to 2 months and 5 days.
PROVISIONS IN EXPRESS ENTRY
The immigration minister has alluded to making some changes in the Express Entry system
He seemed to be excited regarding the provisions to be made in the Express Entry system which will eliminate all the hindrances to scarcity of skilled workers.
The prominent role of the immigration minister is to broaden the process of Canadian permanent residency for skilled workers, and international students via the Express Entry.
The immigration minister has indicated that an occupation-specific Express Entry draw could be introduced among the different immigration programs in Canada.
