Canada Suffers Low Immigration Count of 15,000 People
Canada has been equally affected by the pandemic and to a great extent as it can be witnessed from its low immigration count of only 15,025 new people getting permanent residence in September 2020. When a comparison takes place, we can see that 35,000 was the count of new immigrants in September 2019.
To tally the statistics with last year, 2020 saw a count of 143,500 immigrants from January to September and there will be a deficit of 2, 00,000 immigrants by the end of the year. Whereas 2019 greeted 264,000 new immigrants in their first 9 months and the year ended with 341,000.
Due to the outbreak of the virus, like most countries, Canada too restricted its entrance for certain international travelers. In this context, the immigration minister Marco Mendicino stated that Canada would embrace an additional 341,000 immigrants by the end of this year.
Unfortunately, Canada would fail to achieve its target and due to three main reasons. Firstly, the pandemic has introduced maintaining distance as the ‘new normal’ and this paused the normal holding of IELTS, CELPIP, the language exams otherwise necessary for moving abroad. There has been stagnancy in biometrics submission as well as fetching visas from the Canadian authorities. The second reason holds much of an exigency; the immigrants who are clearly confirmation of permanent residence (COPR) are stranded there following the travel restrictions regulated by the Canadian government. This has resulted in the expiration of their COPRs. And lastly, immigrants who have acquired their COPRs after 18th march are not allowed to enter Canada following the COVID-19 travel restrictions unless they are exceptions.
As things are slowly normalizing, and immigration cannot be paused for a prolonged time, and also with the pandemic being temporary, Canada has again started over welcoming immigration and Marco Mendicino has indeed stated to boost their target to compensate for the fall season.
2021-23 will witness a new emergence in Canadian history with targeting more than 400,000 immigrants. To transform this target into reality, IRCC has been holding bi-weekly Express Entry and the latest entries have actually noticed over 4,500 new invitations for permanent residence.
Note: For those who don’t know, Express Entry is a renowned system for coordinating skilled worker’s applications.
The other method of welcoming skilled workers is through the Provincial Nominee Program or PNP. This draw was also continual throughout the pandemic and it last occurred in Ontario, the largest province of Canada. To sum it up, Canada’s provinces gave out around 3,000 limited nominations in October.
Canada’s immigration count will fail to meet 200,000 counts and that’s happened for the first time in 1999. Though, there has been a noteworthy entry of new applications in the Express Entry pertaining to the likes of PNP and synonymous economic class programs. This is due to the availability of language tests like IELTS and CELPIP and also educational accredited services like World Education Services (WES) being functional. The ones who’ve got a hold of COPRs will be able to travel to Canada once the restrictions are lifted.
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