IRCC Plans to Resume Nominations for FSWP & CEC
Published Date: 3rd December 2021
Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada plans to process as much backlog applications as they can and as fast as they can.
Recently IRCC released a memo stating the reasons for which invitation to candidates who submitted applications under Federal Skilled Worker Program and Canadian Experience Class had suddenly stopped. IRCC justified it by mentioning that their initial plan after implementing the hold was to tackle with backlog applications.
IRCC planned to invite 401,000 immigrants in the year of 2021 through their Express Entry System. To achieve this they made significant changes to their existing policies. Their initial focus was to process the applications of temporary residents of Canada who had applied for Permanent Residency. For this, they issued invitation to candidates who submitted applications under two broad categories being: TR to PR pathway and Canadian Experience Class. From January to October, this year alone, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada invited almost 108,860 candidates to apply for permanent residency under the Canadian Experience Class category. In the middle of the year, they also issued applications through their Provincial Nominee Program to aid the various provinces of Canada in meeting their labor shortages.
All this has a great negative impact for the FSWP candidates who have been waiting on a nomination draw ever since 23rd December 2020. In a recent survey, IRCC clearly indicated that they had an inventory of about 1.8 million applications for permanent residency. With the current pace in which IRCC has resumed issuing nominations, it is speculated that they might wind up 48,000 CEC applications by the end of January to shift their focus to FSWP candidates. As of October 25, there were 165,000 pending FSWP applications that are in dire need to be dealt with. IRCC indicated that they wish to process almost half of their Express Entry backlog before moving on with inviting FSWP applications. Apart from this, this year IRCC held a total of 33 Provincial Nominee Draws and 27 Canadian Experience Class Draws inviting 17,785 and 133,868 candidates respectively.