Canada’s commitment to admit a maximum number of new citizens for the fiscal year 2022-2023 as described in an internal IRCC communication
It proposes that IRCC process 300,000 new citizens and 285,000 decisions overall by March 31, 2023. Application reviews are conducted and decisions are made about whether to accept, reject, or mark the application as incomplete. 300,000 authorized applicants must take the oath of citizenship either in person or virtually.
Over the fiscal year 2021–2022, 253,000 citizenship applications were dealt with, which is an improvement over 2021–2022.
217,000 new citizens were acquired by the IRCC in 2021-2022. The government of Canada is on track to meet its target of 116,000 new citizens admitted in the fiscal year 2022-2023. The same period in 2021 had seen only 35,000 Canadians sworn in.
In addition, the document explains the difficulties in processing citizenship applications and ensuring that all approved individuals can take the oath of citizenship within a reasonable amount of time.
Paper applications will no longer be accepted by the IRCC
IRCC was unable to process most applications due to the COVID-19 pandemic that began in March 2020. In this case, application forms were mailed to a single location because the department had limited capacity to handle paper applications. Due to the cancellation of all in-person events, the IRCC was unable to interview candidates. As well as administer oaths at citizenship ceremonies.
The citizenship application process will be completely digital for some applicants from November 2020 onwards due to these limitations. In this case, any applicant over 18 years of age is qualified to submit an application. New candidates may have a simplified application process, but paper applications are still backlogged.
In order to prevent an ever-growing backlog, the document encourages IRCC to keep its first-in, first-out policy for all applications. This would involve prioritizing older paper applications while simultaneously prioritizing some digital applications.
As part of its fiscal year 2021 goal, the IRCC aims to receive 5,000 digital applications out of a targeted 245,000 decisions. According to the research, a growing number of applications are now digital. It will require an increase in digital applications processed during the 2022–2023 fiscal year.
An average processing time of 20 months
Moreover, a May report indicated that the processing time had reached 27 months. A memo states that this is expected since online applications are increasing and paper applications are behind schedule. As of June, last year, 413,000 grant applications were in the grant inventory.
The IRCC claims that 80% of all new applications have been processed according to service standards and the backlog has been reduced. The company has hired more than 1,000 new employees. It plans also to call for reps to have access to a status tracker for citizenship applications. An online citizenship application will also be available by the end of the year for minors under 18 years of age.
