Internal communication of IRCC highlights citizenship targets for 2022-23 fiscal.
Immigration, Refugees, and Citizenship Canada will process approval of 300,000 new Citizenship applications by the end of the current financial year, March 31, 2022. The new citizenship figures of the current financial year are remarkably higher than the last fiscal when Canada welcomed 217,000 new citizens. This year’s figures are much higher than pre-COVID Citizenship targets during the 2019-20 financial year.
The existing figure for new citizens is 116,000, which is far above the figure of 35,000 during the corresponding period in the last year. It shows Canada is on track to meet the goal of welcoming 300,000 new citizens this financial year. Giving an oath to 30,000 new citizens will be challenging.
The pandemic restricted the processing of many applications in March 2022. Immigration, Refugees, and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) could process paper applications because of the cancellation of in-person events. It hampered personal interviews of citizenship applicants and the oath-taking formalities.
IRCC shifted to digital-only applications to deal with the situation. Since the IRCC follows the First-in-First-out policy for processing the applications, it will prioritize processing paper applications received earlier. IRCC may process a few digital applications to control the backlog.
IRCC appointed 1000 extra staff to boost the processing of immigration applications. The present processing period is 27 months, as per a report in May 2022. IRCC will allow minors to submit digital applications by the end of this year.
