Sean Fraser” immigration minister of Canada has announced that the Express Entry invitation for CEC and FSWP candidates will resume in July.
There are several other announcements made by Sean Fraser that are given below. Today’s Announcements summary
- The Express Entry program for FSWP, FSTP, and CEC holder candidates will resume in the month of July.
- The huge majority of new Express Entry applications will be processed in six months. According to IRCC, the range of current processing time of Express Entry is from seven months to over 20 months.
- In the coming weeks, IRCC will provide more details on making the process simpler. Approx. 95000 PGWPs will expire in 2022 22 and it is estimated that 50,000 PGWP holders could benefit from this newly opened work permit.
- Applicants will no longer be required to reside in Canada full-time while their application is being processed.
- Those candidates who also apply for an open work permit at the time of waiting for their PR application to be processed will also be able to obtain a work permit that is valid till the end of 2024. This will ensure that all permanent residency applications are finalized before applicants are required to Apply for re-enhancement of their temporary status.
- To support family reunification, immediate family members involved in a prime applicant’s permanent residency application who are outside Canada will be eligible to obtain their own open work permits
Express Entry Program at the time of the pandemic
Until this year, Express Entry Canada had mainly welcomed economic-class immigrants.
Express Entry Program is an application management system for given three migration programs that are CEC (Canadian Experience Class). FSTP (Federal Skilled Trade Program), and FSWP (Federal Skilled worker Program). A part of the Provincial Nominee Program is also managed by it. It is based on points where the eligible candidates get a CRS score for human capital factors like their education, language skills, age, work experience, etc.
IRCC invited the highest-scoring candidates to apply for migration before the pandemic. Generally, candidates were not selected on the basis of the schedule of eligibility in these draws.
Earlier in the pandemic, the IRCC focused on inviting CEC candidates to achieve its goal of accepting a record-high number of immigrants in a year amid travel restrictions. CEC candidates are often already in Canada and therefore were not subject to the travel restrictions Canada had in place between 2020-and 2021. This focus enabled Canada to offload more than 405,000 permanent residents last year, the highest number of newcomers in its history.
The IRCC has also focused on inviting PNP candidates during the pandemic to support provincial immigration goals.
The combination of this change in Express Entry policy and challenges related to the pandemic has resulted in backlogs within the immigration system, including Express Entry.
Due to the lack of FSWP and CEC invitations Canada is dealing with a historic labor shortage. The unemployment rate is low and job vacancies are near record highs.
CEC candidates are international students who have graduated from a designated Canadian educational institution and who go on to obtain a post-graduation work permit. The PGWP is an open work permit that allows international graduates to gain one year of Canadian work experience, in which they are often required to apply for permanent residency. Generally speaking, you can only get a PGWP once, which means that if you are not able to submit a permanent residency application while holding the PGWP, you risk losing your work permit status unless you have No other work permit available for which you are eligible.
CEC candidates are losing their work permit status because the lack of an Express Entry Invitation to Apply (ITA) means they cannot apply for a Bridging Open Work Permit (BOWP) while they are submitting their permanent residency applications. Let’s wait for IRCC to process. As the name implies, the BOWP “bridges” the gap between the expiry of the work permit, like the PGWP, and the candidate eventually seeking permanent residency. BOWP allows certain permanent residency candidates to continue working in Canada for any employer of their choice.
When the IRCC decided to focus on inviting and processing CEC candidates the FSWP was the main source of National skilled migrants to Canada from its introduction in 1967 until very recently. This temporary pandemic-induced policy change has reduced the influx of National skilled migrants into Canada’s workforce in times of a historically tight labor market due to the aging of Canada’s population and major changes to the labor market as a result of the pandemic.
Meanwhile, in 2022, IRCC is seeking to offload 55,000 Express Entry permanent residents, which is almost half of the 2021 target. The reason for the temporary decline in Express Entry targets is that it may discontinue its temporary to permanent residency (TR2PR) program and adjust other priorities. The IRCC has invited 90,000 international graduates and required staff for PR through the program TR2PR between May and November 2021.
More applications are being processed by IRCC
It is noted by IRCC that the Express Entry backlog has grown from about 112,000 people in September 2021 to over 48,000 in March 2022. As compared to the same period in 2022 it is double the number of PR decisions in the first quarter of 2022. 156,000 PR decisions are finalized by IRCC between January 1 and March 2022. Moreover, 100,000 work permit applications have been processed in the first quarter of 2022, as compared to 58000 during the same period of last year.
