Authorities in Canada may consider drastic measures in order to reduce the increased immigration backlog, taking also into account lifting the eligibility requirements for about half a million visitor visas, according to the Economic Times report.
According to a previous draft report, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) are ready to take aggressive action in order to reduce the backlog of visitor visa applications by next month, VisaGuide.World reports.
The report says that IRCC has two options to reduce the number of visitor visa applications; the first one attempts to process about 195,000 applications in bulk, taking also into account many tourists from countries that require visas to visit the country and the second one to waive specific eligibility requirements for about 450,000 applications.
Through a statement, Canada’s Immigration Minister, Sean Fraser didn’t address any specific issue regarding the policy memo or other changes.
“Canada is now processing visitor visa applications faster than it was before the pandemic. More than 260,000 visitor visas were processed in November, in comparison to a monthly average of nearly 180,000 in 2019” the Minister pointed out in this regard.
He stressed that despite the notable progress there is still much work that needs to be done in this regard in order to meet pre-pandemic processing timelines.
Authorities in Canada said that the number of applicants in IRCC’s inventory declined from nearly 2.2 million to just more than 2.1 million over December. As of the beginning of last month, there were over 700,000 temporary resident visa (TRV) applications in the system.
“We’re actually removing cases from our system faster than they’re coming in, which gives me confidence that we’re getting back on track,” Fraser pointed out in this regard previously.
Previously, authorities in Canada said that in the first 11 months of last year, a record number of visa applications were processed.
The figures provided by Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) revealed that about 4.8 million visa applications were processed from January until November last year.
It was reported that in November alone there were over 260,000 visas processed, which shows that the figures are notably higher compared to the same month in 2019 statistics, during which month about 180,000 visa applications were processed.
IRCC stressed that a total of 4.8 million applications, were also included 700,000 work permits, 670,000 study permits and a huge number of visitor visas.
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