The latest Immigration Levels Plan 2023-2025 finally came out, with a target of welcoming 500,000 new immigrants by 2025. Canada also targets to bring 465,000 and 485,000 immigrants in 2023 and 2025, respectively. The Immigration Levels Plan aims to set an annual target for Canadian immigration. The goals of Canadian immigration include economic development, family reunions, and providing shelter to refugee immigrants amidst the conflicts.
The latest Immigration Levels Plan- Express Entry and PNP targets
Most of the new permanent residents move to Canada under the economic class programs, including Provincial Nominee Programs and Express Entry.
The Express Entry targets, including chief applicants, dependents, and spouses, will increase in the following ways:
- 82,880 immigrants in 2023
- 109,020 immigrants in 2024
- 114,000 immigrants in 2025
PNP continues to remain a prominent program to attract and welcome economic-class immigrants. Hence, the targets under PNP will include the following:
- 105,500 in 2023
- 110,000 in 2024
- 117,500 in 2025
Increased admissions under the Parents and Grandparents Program
IRCC primarily aims to reunite families, and the Parents and Grandparents program is an attempt to do so. Apart from Economic Class Programs, the Immigration Levels Plan also introduced Family Class Sponsorship for permanent residency. The Family Class Immigration Program enables spouses, family members, partners, and children to sponsor applicants for permanent residency status.
The Spousal, Partners, and Children Program annually targets to welcome 80,000 newcomers to Canada.
PGP targets are on the rise to welcome at least 28,500 immigrants in 2023. However, it targets 34,000 and 36,000 in 2024 and 2025, respectively.
Refugees and Humanitarian Classes to witness low targets
The immigration levels plan does provide immigration distribution to the Refugees and Humanitarian Class. Canada is well-known for its kindness towards the victims facing severe challenges in their native countries. The country provides shelter to such victims. Hence, it targets to receive more immigrants under the Humanitarian class. The higher targets are also due to Canada’s attempt to accomplish several ongoing campaigns. One of the main campaign targets is welcoming 40,000 Afghanistan refugees.
The current refugee target will welcome more than 76,000 new immigrants in 2023 and 2024. However, the target will decline to 72,750 in 2025. Similarly, the Humanitarian Class target will decrease from 16,000 in 2023 to 8,000 immigrants in 2025.
Canada’s latest Immigration Levels Plan- its current strategy
Canadian immigration began to evolve back in the 1980s. However, at that point, the Canadian government didn’t have the farsightedness to gauge the future. Back then, Canada placed importance on the daily economic targets and set the immigration plan accordingly.
Official data claims that in 1984, Canada only welcomed below 90,000 newcomers. Later, in the 1990s, the Canadian government realized the significance of immigration because of the acute labor shortage. After eight years, it increased the immigration target to 25,000 new permanent residents. As a result, the Liberal government flourished, but the economic recession led to an increased focus on the economic class immigrants and reduced immigrants under the Refugees and Humanitarian Class.
Liberal government
Canada received around 260,000 newcomers yearly before the Liberal government took control in 2015. Hence, the immigration targets witnessed a rise to 300,000 immigrants. Further, the target increased to 340,000 newcomers before the pandemic broke out in 2020.
IRCC faced severe challenges while processing immigration applications due to the various travel restrictions. Despite the border closures and restrictions, Canada went on to break immigration records in 2021 by welcoming an extraordinary figure of 405,000 new permanent residents. The Canadian Experience Class and Provincial Nominee Programs comprised maximum distributions.
Currently, Canada is undergoing a difficult period of labor shortage, with a minimum of one million job vacancies available. These two factors are significant for the increased immigration targets.
One of the critical reasons behind the Canadian labor shortage is the reduced birth rate, that is, only 1.4 children per woman. Internationally, this birth rate is the lowest one. The natural birth rate in Canada is at a slower pace. Hence, the number of births is still more than the number of deaths annually.
Immigration is the primary factor that will eventually result in population and labor growth. Therefore, newcomers will also require a higher tax base, which will act as a major factor in Canada’s initiatives to offer education and healthcare services.
Conclusion
Overall, Canada comprises an increased population of older people. More than nine million individuals, or a quarter of the Canadian population, will meet their retirement age by 2030. Consequently, the workforce shortage will rapidly create a sense of panic in all economic sectors.
Therefore, the IRPA obligates IRCC to introduce a new Immigration Levels Plan every year. However, this year two immigration plans came out for 2022-2024, with the first introduced in February and the second later. The first came out late due to the federal election in September 2021.
