The 2022 Annual Immigration Report to Parliament records the efforts of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) over the past year. It also presents its vision for the coming years in relation to immigration policies and programs set by Canada’s Immigration Levels Plan.
In 2021, IRCC distributed permanent residency through the Provincial Nomination Programs (PNPs) and the Canadian Experience Class to those immigrants who were already settled in Canada prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. This focus on the economic class immigrants resulted in the immigrants forming the 90% growth of the Canadian labor force.
The pathway from temporary to permanent residence was designed mainly for international students and workers in essential services. It converted around 191,338 temporary dwellers into permanent residents of Canada. Moreover, with the international graduate stream, it has welcomed around 40,000 students without having them acquire a Post-Graduation Work Permit (PGWP).
Due to the circumstances created by the pandemic where the processes were halted because of travel restrictions etc., there are around 2.6 million applications in the backlog. To deal with the matter, IRCC has made an investment of $85 million for the purpose of recruiting and training around 1,200 new staff to process the backlogs. Along with this IRCC is also taking measures to make Client Support Centre and digitize the citizenship application process with a special provision for those who cannot apply online.