In the past year, Canada made excellent strides towards reaching its target goal of 401,000 immigrants achieving citizenship. The minister of immigration just announced that Canada is, in fact, right on schedule and ready to go. It is estimated that the new standards will be finally met by the end of 2021, as 26,600 new permanent residents have already been confirmed earlier this year.
The increase is suspected to boost international affairs, and the steady increase was recently confirmed by immigration minister Marco Mendicino in an interview with Bloomberg News. 401,000 New people are expected to be confirmed by the end of this year, and at the rate that Canada is going, it looks to be highly possible that the goal might be met.
It comes as no surprise that the well-known Express Entry system is the impetus that has kept these numbers growing at an exponential rate. This was a public event which was held on Saturday February 13th, 2021 where most of the participants were people who were already living in Canada but awaiting their full citizenship status.
Perhaps this was Canada’s effort at boosting their economy and improving foreign relations at a time when the world was just coming out of it’s pandemic slumber. Either way, things could begin to relax as Canada unseals its borders for more new residents in the near future.
The Canadian government used the Express Entry as an opportunity to boost improvements towards its overall goal. On February 13th, the Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada sent ITAs, or Invitations to Apply to roughly 27,332 candidates. This came as an effort to speed up the process of new residents in the region. It was a drastic improvement to the previous year, where the number of candidates fell by half due to travel restrictions. In fact, the IRCC was able to get around 90 percent of these people living in the country to participate in that special event.
Even with the dawn of a new year, there are still the residual effects of the global pandemic. Canada is still giving immigrants living and working in the region top priority for health and safety reasons.
With some restrictions still being placed on travel worldwide, Canada knows it must exercise strict measures of its own. Its government allows for travel only as necessary, and there are some who are still allowed these privileges, such as essential workers and international students, for example. Although this keeps the borders closed, the situation is only temporary and should end soon.
Health officials avow that once enough people get vaccinated, herd immunity should result, and this means that safety restrictions will slowly start to lift. As for the moment, only non-citizens living in Canada can take a chance on earning full-fledged Canadian citizenship.
