The IRCC has claimed a total of 18,44,424 backlog applications.
The latest data of IRCC in mid-March has reported that a total of 1.84M immigrant applications are pending for their final decisions.
The IRCC has released its latest data of backlog which comprises applications from citizens of Canada, Canadian PRs, and travelers.
The backlog increased in the following manner:
- This year, from March 15 to March 17, the inventory was 18,44,424 immigrants
- On the very first day of February 2022, the inventory total was 18,15,628 immigrants
- The previous year, on December 15, the backlog stood at 18,13,144 immigrants
- On October 27, 2021, the total inventory of backlog was 17,92,404 applicants
- On July 6, there was a total of 14,47,474 pending applications
The above data indicates the number of applicants waiting for the decisions of their respective applications.
The pending applications for Canadian PRs are mentioned from March 15-March 17 because earlier the IRCC had provided the statistics of temporary residents, in which the visitor record was not available. And the IRCC does not maintain a regular record except when asked. Then, the temporary residency data as of March 17 was provided.
The statistics provided by IRCC were similar to the comparison data as on the first day of February. Remarks like N/A depict that the information is not provided by the IRCC.
The progress of IRCC over a month
CEC and FSWP were mainly the 2 programs that showed development over the last month. Around ten thousand applications are pending for their final responses, which IRCC claims to complete by coming summers.
And FSWP made an extreme progression within the last 14 days. The IRCC was successful in completing more applications in just 14 days, which took 210 days in the last year. It has also cleared a total of 4,000 applications of the FSWP category from the end of February till mid-March. This indicates if the same pace is maintained, all the backlogs of the FSWP category can become 0 by spring.
The Parents and Grandparents Program and humanitarian category have also improved in diminishing their backlogs. Although the spouses, children, parent’s categories showed an increase in their records. The immigration minister has responded that the processing time of applications will be again 1 year. Additionally, to this, the government provides the facility for tracking applications through its government portal.
Why did backlog increase after February?
The backlog of citizenship category by the end of last month was counted at 4,53,265. This total has all the pending emails.
The citizenship category backlog recorded a total of 4,48,000 immigrants.
The citizenship applications increased by 5,000 in February than by the end of the previous year.
The backlog for TR2PR applications was raised by 5,400 standing applications. The IRCC has received all the new applications from early May till November. These applications were instead moved to cloud environments because of which the IRCC denied claiming it as a part of the inventory.
The pending applications were took over by the Global Case Management System. The IRCC got applications from 91,000 immigrant applications for the TR2PR category.
Programs like PNP and Caring for Children Program and QSWP showed an increase in their backlogs.
Inventory for temporary residents’ applications also increased. The backlog record of work permits increased by 14,700 immigrants within one month. Applications for study and work permit extension also increased.
New reforms since fall 2021
The IRCC has stopped releasing applications for the FSWP and CEC category to solve the issue of increasing inventory which was causing delays in processing time. This step will give the IRCC personnel to focus more on clearing off the backlogs. Although the IRCC has been releasing applications for the PNP category twice in 7 days.
The IRCC will commence releasing applications for CEC and FSWP category if backlog becomes 0 and processing time comes back to 6 months.
Around $85 M funds have been assigned to eliminate increased processing time. This investment will help in taking the processing time for study and work permits, PRs, extensions to their previous time.
According to the Immigration Levels Plan 2022-2024, the government aims to accommodate a large number of immigrants for the next 3 years in a row. Although the number of applications for Express Entry for current and next year has been reduced it will take over in 2024.
To assist the people of Ukraine, the Canadian Government has released a special program, Canada-Ukraine Authorization for Emergency Travel. The Canadian Government is showing up with new reforms to help the people of Ukraine and provide them refugees in the country.
