Canada Immigration Improvements
IRCC recently announced on September 1, 2022 that they will be taking action towards making Canada immigration improvements in the near future.
Canada remains a popular destination for newcomers, but this increase in immigration levels requires modern and digitized systems to handle the ongoing immigration backlogs.
Canada immigration improvements include the following:
Reduce wait times
The Minister of IRCC, Sean Fraser, has proceeded with hiring 1,250 new employees in an effort to reduce waiting times. The hiring of new employees shall allow visa offices to process more applications, thereby reducing the backlog.
Additionally, permanent resident applicants in Canada who meet certain requirements will be exempt from providing an immigration medical examination. This procedure will affect approximately 180,000 clients by helping them save time and money.
For spousal sponsorship applications. IRCC began conducting telephone and video interviews with sponsors and applicants due to the COVID-19 pandemic. By making this change, they were able to welcome 69,000 spouses, partners and children in 2021. Other miscellaneous changes have allowed IRCC to return to the service standard of 12 months for new spousal sponsorship applications. Further changes will allow a hybrid model in which a combination of in-person and virtual interviews can take place throughout various visa offices in Canada and abroad.
Digitizing permanent residence applications
On September 23, 2022, IRCC will begin transitioning to 100% digital applications for most permanent residence applications. This commitment was made back in January 2022.
Providing better information to Canada PR applicants
Since February 2022, Canada PR applicants under the spouse, partner and dependent children pathway can now utilize the online status tracker tool to see the status of their application. A similar tool for citizenship applications was introduced in May 2021. By spring 2023, they expect to adopt this status tracker to 7 other permanent residence and temporary residence programs.
For checking processing time, IRCC has a tool which shows the time it took to process 80% of applications in each particular visa office. IRCC plans to also introduce forward-looking tools to predict the processing time in the future.
Citizenship program upgrades
IRCC released a new tool in August 2021 to allow citizenship applicants to apply online for applicants aged 18 and over. The tool can now be used by groups of adults to apply together. By the end of the year, IRCC plans to allow this tool to be used for minors under 18 years old as well. Due to the pandemic, online citizenship tests and virtual ceremonies were conducted.
If you have any questions about coming to Canada, feel free to book a consultation by clicking the image below or visit the IRCC website.
