To reduce the visitor visa backlog, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) is planning to decrease the Visitor visa applications backlog.
The government is considering decisive measures by lifting some eligibility criteria for nearly half a million applications. This necessary action will significantly shorten wait times while allowing more people to visit Canada. An IRCC memo revealed two potential strategies to reduce the number of visitor visa backlog applications.
IRCC New steps To Clear Visitor Visa Backlog
An internal IRCC memo from December 2022 that’s been obtained by The Globe and Mail discusses two ways for decreasing the number of applications for visitor visas.
- The first approach would involve processing an estimated 195,000 applications in bulk,
- while the second option considers relaxing eligibility criteria for as many as 450,000 candidates.
Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada is aiming to significantly reduce or remove its backlog of visitor visa applications by February and is ready to take “extreme measures” to do so, according to a draft copy from December. As of early December, a portion of the total number of applications for temporary resident visas was in the system: more than 700,000.
As of the end of last year, there were more than two million immigration applications to be processed, including those for permanent residency, work permits, and study visas. According to the memo, the stockpile is “weakening the public’s trust” in the department that concerns the immigration department.
Furthermore, immigration authorities will no longer examine to see if visitors have the funds to remain in Canada, according to one of The Globe And Mail’s sources.
Also, foreign nationals would not be required to show that they will leave Canada when their visa expires.
This will be a temporary solution to reduce stock, and the final policy may differ from the one recommended in the memo.
The memo also made a point of emphasizing the potential of keeping these actions a secret and stating that none of them would need to be made public.
Two internal IRCC sources, however, told The Globe and Mail that the government had opted for the second option and that an announcement could be made in a few days.
To find out more details about “Canada plans to clear the visitor visa backlog by February” you can contact one of our immigration specialists at Gunness & Associates.
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