Minors under the age of 18 will be eligible to apply for citizenship online by the end of the year
Ottawa: Canada plans to grant citizenship to 300,000 people in the 2022-2023 fiscal year, a move likely to benefit many Indians, an IANS report in The Tribune, Chandigarh, says.
The Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) memo recommends that it would process a total of 285,000 decisions and 300,000 new citizens by March 31, 2023.
A decision means a review of an application which is then approved, denied, or marked as incomplete.
The citizenship target means that 300,000 approved applicants must take the oath of citizenship, which would be either in person or virtually.
IRCC also said that minors below 18 could apply for citizenship online by the end of the year.
This is a significant increase over the 2021-2022 fiscal year and even exceeds the pre-pandemic targets of 2019-2020, when 253,000 citizenship applications were processed.
In March 2020 because of the Covid pandemic, the IRCC’s work suffered a serious setback because the department could only process paper applications mailed to a central location. It was also unable to conduct interviews with candidates or hold oath swearing ceremonies.
So far in the 2022-2023 fiscal, Canada has welcomed 116,000 new citizens and is on track to achieve its target. By comparison, over the same period in 2021, the country had only sworn in 35,000 people.
Though there is no country-wise break-up of the numbers, Indians are the top immigrant group to take up residence in Canada in 2022.
According to the country’s 2016 reports, Canada has some 1.4 million people of Indian descent.
In 2021, nearly 100,000 Indians moved to Canada under the Temporary Foreign Worker Programme and some 130,000 got work permits under the International Mobility Program.
During 2021-2022, over 210,000 permanent residents also acquired Canadian citizenship.
There are over 622,000 foreign students in Canada, with Indians numbering 217,410 as of December 31, 2021.
The IRCC is taking necessary steps to clear the backlog and processing of 80% of all new applications within service standards.
To do this, over 1,000 new staff have been hired and there are plans to expand access to the citizenship application status tracker to representatives.
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