Today's major announcements provide more certainty for Canadian immigration candidates.
Minister Sean Fraser made several other major announcements, such as that Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) will be offering an open work permit extension of up to 18 months to Post-Graduation Work Permit (PGWP) holders.
A summary of today’s major announcements
- Express Entry invitations to FSWP, CEC, and FSTP candidates will resume in early July.
- The vast majority of new Express Entry applications will be processed within the six-month service standard. According to IRCC, current Express Entry processing times range from seven months to in excess of 20 months.
- Those with an expiring PGWP between January and December 2022 will qualify for an additional open work permit of up to 18 months beginning this summer. IRCC is working on a simplified process and will provide further details “in the weeks ahead.” IRCC notes about 95,000 PGWPs will expire in 2022, and it estimates as many as 50,000 PGWP holders could benefit from this new open work permit.
- Applicants will no longer be required to remain in Canada throughout the entire time their application is being processed.
- Applicants who also apply for an open work permit while they wait for their permanent residence application to be processed will be able to get work permits that are valid until the end of 2024. This will ensure all permanent residence applications will be finalized before applicants need to apply to extend their temporary status again.
- To support family reunification, the immediate family members included in a principal applicant’s permanent residence application who are outside of Canada will be eligible to get their own open work permit.
IRCC notes that the Express Entry backlog has been cut by more than half from nearly 112,000 people in September 2021 to 48,000 in March 2022. It has also doubled the number of permanent resident decisions made in the first quarter of 2022 compared to the same period in 2021. IRCC finalized 156,000 permanent residence decisions between January 1st and March 31, 2022. In addition, IRCC has processed over 100,000 work permit applications in the first quarter of 2022, compared to 58,000 during the same period last year.
