Immigration plans for 2022-2024 from the Government of Canada will provide important updates by February when it announces the 2022-2024 Immigration Level Plan.
The announcement includes Canada’s immigration goals for this year and the next two years, as well as the number of new immigrants Canada welcomes as part of various economic, family and humanitarian classes.
This is the first such announcement since Canada announced in October 2020 that it would surprisingly accept more than 400,000 new immigrants annually.
This is about 40,000 more people per year than the previous goal by November 1st of each year during the session.
If the parliament is not open, the announcement will be within 30 days of the reconvening of the parliament. Announcements are done by November 1st of each year, but it didn’t happen in 2021 due to the dissolution of Parliament by the Government of Canada in the September elections.
After the election, a new parliamentary session began on November 22nd. Congress sat for 20 days before taking a vacation. The Immigration Secretary Sean Fraser must announce a new tier plan by Friday, February 11th at the latest.
In recent history, the Government of Canada has made timely announcements and rarely announced them earlier unless the deadline hits the weekend.
If this continues this year, the announcement will be in the second half of the week of February 7. It should be noted that the Government of Canada is very likely to present a second-tier plan by November 1st as part of their immigration plans 2022-2024 this year as well.
The Immigration Level Plan 2023-2025 regularly schedules announcements and will proceed as planned, except for the very unlikely scenario of the Government of Canada decided to hold elections for the second consecutive year.
In 2021, the IRCC achieved its goal of landing 401,000 immigrants, one of the highest in Canada’s history. The IRCC started last year in a harsh pandemic environment by focusing on turning temporary residents of Canada into permanent residents.
However, what is subject to change is the total number of immigrants that Canada will target over the next few years. On the one hand, the Government of Canada is already happy with its ambitious goals and decided to keep them that way.
This means that the number of immigrants per year will continue to grow slowly, as the baseline is over 400,000 immigrants. For comparison: By 2016, the baseline value was about 250,000 migrants annually.
Another consideration is that the Government of Canada may wish to refrain from a significant increase to deal with the backlog. Fraser, on the other hand, has shown its openness to further targeting, in response to stakeholder feedback.
The minister said he would listen to community groups and employers to see if they had a desire to welcome more migrants. Canada’s immigration goals are already high, and the government can argue that it needs to break higher levels for several reasons.
Backlogs dealt with, communities across the country are suffering from affordable housing, and historically, welcoming immigrants during a recession has hurt the work of newcomers.
Conversely, higher supporters argue that Canada needs higher levels to support post-pandemic economic and fiscal recovery, and more immigrants to alleviate labour shortages. Maybe. You can also justify higher goals by allowing the IRCC to clear the backlog more quickly.
In addition, higher goals may need to reach the government’s goal of resettling 40,000 Afghan refugees. What is certain is that we will not guess as long as the February 11 deadline is approaching.
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