Did you know that Canada surpassed its 2021 immigration goal after landing 405,303 new permanent immigrants last year? That’s according to new data from IRCC by CIC News. And the last time in its history that this North American country surpassed 400,000 newcomers was in 1913. And we all know what happened the following year. A breakout of the First World War led to immigration levels dropping.
The target of the Immigration Levels Plan 2021-2023 was to welcome 401,000 immigrants in 2021 alone. Why? Your guess is correct. The initiative was to support the post-pandemic economic recovery in Canada. 2020 was when Canada’s population growth fell to the lowest point since the First World War as it welcomed only 184,000 newcomers. But we understand that Canada’s pre-pandemic target was to receive 341,000 newcomers per year.
From what we obtained, 2021 saw the Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) focus on transitioning most of Canada’s temporary inhabitants to permanent residents. Why? To meet its target. According to IRCC, this would be the most effective way of meeting its target amid pandemic-related issues like COVID-19 travel restrictions.
But we learned that IRCC took other extra measures to get more permanent residents, including holding Express Entry draws. These draws attracted Canadian Experience Class candidates’ high totals from January to September. You can also remember the six immigration streams that IRCC launched targeting some extra 90,000 temporary foreign employees and international learners residing in Canada.
We can see that most of Canada’s settlers enter the country under economic class programs. During the pre-pandemic period, we saw 30% of new economic class landings featured applicants from within Canada, whereas the remaining 70% economic class newcomers from overseas. However, 2021 was the turning point as 70% landed from within Canada while 30% came from abroad.
Now we can better understand why its landings increased significantly in 2021’s second half, thanks to the six TR to PR streams launch and the large CEC invitation rounds of IRCC. IRCC welcomed many new in-Canada applications during last year’s first half and before ramping up processing by June. It then concluded the year by landing permanent residents exceeding 40,000 per month.
So, how did Canada’s newcomers land in 2021?
We have established that 252,975 permanent residents landed in Canada under the economic class. After doing your calculations, you will realize that this is figure works out to 62% of the entire settlers who landed in 2021. And this is a higher percentage than the targeted 58% under the 2021 level plan. In reality, in 2021, the North American country welcomed over 20,000 other economic class settlers than it had targeted.
In 2021, we saw 80,900 under-family class immigrants landing. And this was below the 103,500 mark that the 2021 levels plan had targeted. So, only 20% of the new landings last year were the family class, and this failed to meet the 26% levels plan target.
Cumulatively, you can see that 60 115 permanent residents landed in Canada as protected persons and refugees, slightly below the 65,000 levels plan goal. Percentage-wise, it was 15% of the cumulative new landings, a fraction less than the 16% levels plan dream.
We learned that IRCC classified the remaining amount as “All Other Immigration.”
