Canada is reducing processing time for Permanent residency applicants

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government is trying a new tactic to mitigate the economic damage from a dramatic drop in immigration: persuade foreigners already in the country to stay.
Canada announced plans last week to make it easier for the more than 1 million temporary students, workers and asylum seekers now living in the country to become permanent residents, giving them a path to citizenship. In an interview Monday, Immigration Minister Marco Mendicino said it’s the logical way forward to make up for a decline in foreigners moving to Canada during the pandemic.

Canada relies on two tracks of migration in any given year: permanent residents and a much larger group of temporary residents. Both are down dramatically.
After recording a net increase of 190,952 temporary residents last year, the first six months of 2020 has seen a net decrease of 18,221, according to Statistics Canada data.
The permanent track has also been upended. Canada admitted just 128,430 permanent residents between January and August, about half the number from the same period last year. At the current pace, Canada will be about 150,000 permanent residents short of its target this year of 341,000.
That’s having an impact on Canada’s total population, which grew just 0.1% in the three months through June, the second-lowest quarterly gain in records dating back to 1946.
Many migrants work in essential services like health care, where capacity is currently being tested, Mendicino said. Making temporary residents permanent will address Canada’s short-term needs to respond to Covid-19 and help the country address the longer-term demographic challenges, the minister said.

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