The IRCC (Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada)’s planning and performance division for a senior official, mentions that by March 31, 2023, IRCC processed a total of 285,000 choices and 300,000 new citizens. A choice is an application review, which is then approved, denied, or marked as unfinished. Also, the citizenship aim means that 300,000 approved candidates must take the pledge of citizenship, whether in person or virtually.
Additionally, over the 2021-2022 fiscal year, this is a noteworthy increase and even beats the pre-pandemic targets of 2019-2020, when 253,000 citizenship applications were processed.
Apart from that. The IRCC succeeded in inviting 217,000 new citizens in 2021-2022. So far in the 2022-2023 financial year, Canada has welcomed 116,000 new citizens and is well on its way to the success target. By assessment, over a similar period in 2021, Canada had only confirmed 35,000 people.
Furthermore, the current challenges involved in processing applications as well as confirming all positive choices can take the citizenship oath in a reasonable timeframe.
IRCC Moving Away From Paper Submissions
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic onset, IRCC became unable to process most applications in March 2020. This was because the department can process paper applications only that were sent to a central location. As all in-person actions were also canceled, this meant that IRCC cannot conduct interviews with applicants and there could not be any pledge swearing at citizenship ceremonies.
These restrictions led to a change to making the citizenship application process completely digital, for some candidates, starting in November 2020. This has also extended to all those who apply who are above the age of 18. But, though this may streamline the process for new candidates, a huge paper applications backlog leftovers.
In addition, the IRCC stays with its present system of first-in-first-out for all applications, meaning keeping focus on older, paper applications while also creating room to arrange a small number of digital applications to stop the growth of backlog.
Also, IRCC had a goal of 5,000 digital applications for the financial year out of a targeted 245,000 choices in 2021. As a greater number of applications are now digital, for the 2022-2023 financial year, there will be a rise in the number of digital applications processed.
Processing Times Above 20 Months
The processing time based on the published subsequent report in May stood at 27 months. Also, it is to be expected due to the online applications increasing along with the paper applications backlog. Further, there were 413,000 applications in the grant list as of last June.
Also, IRCC states it has taken steps to clear the backlog and process 80% of all new applications in service values. To do this, more than 1,000 new staff have been employed and there are tactics to increase access to the citizenship application status tracker to representatives. Moreover, by the end of the year, minors under the age of 18 will be qualified to apply for citizenship online.
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