Canada Immigration and Visa
Dec 19, 2022
Progress made this year, in reducing backlogs of applications that have been in IRCC’s inventories beyond its service standards.
Nearly twice as many applications—4.8 million—as opposed to 2.5 million—had been handled by the end of November by the IRCC.
The IRCC has digitized applications, hired and trained new staff, streamlined procedures, and tapped into automation technology to boost processing efficiency while safeguarding Canadians' safety and security. This has helped to strengthen our immigration system. The department continues to make progress in processing, resulting in decreased wait times for our clients, and is on target to fulfil its objective of processing 80% of new applications within service standards for the majority of programs.
Temporary Residence Applications
Canada is on track to break its own record for the processing of study permits this year. IRCC has processed more than 670,000 study permits as of November 30 this year, compared to more than 500,000 at the same time previous year. As a result of these initiatives, the majority of new study permits are now handled within the required 60 days.
With approximately 700,000 work permits processed by November 30 compared to about 223,000 during the same period in 2019, before to the epidemic, there were also significant advances in the processing of work permits.
In order to accommodate the rising demand for visitor visas to Canada, IRCC continues to cut back on backlogs and process visas more swiftly. Canada now processes more tourist visa applications each month than it did before the outbreak. More than 260,000 visitor permits were processed in November alone. In contrast, there were roughly 180,000 applications each month on average in 2019.
Permanent Residence Applications
405,000 new permanent residents arrived in Canada in 2021, exceeding the previous record of 1913. Canada is still on track to meet its goal of adding more than 431,000 new permanent residents after another record year in 2022.
IRCC has also been updating its services and extending assistance for programs granting permanent residency. All new applications for spousal sponsorship and Express Entry are now processed within the pre-pandemic service norm of 12 months and 6 months, respectively. Due to IRCC's reduction of the pandemic backlog of applications for card renewals by 99%, permanent residents can also anticipate lower wait times when renewing their permanent residence cards.
Citizenship
With one of the highest naturalization rates in the world, Canada is happy to welcome all immigrants and encourages them to complete their journey by obtaining Canadian citizenship. Approximately 251,000 new citizens were welcomed from April to November, according to the IRCC, setting a record for new Canadian citizens and surpassing the previous fiscal year's total. As a result, more than 70% of citizenship inventory applications currently meet service standards.