IRCC is aiming to grant citizenship to 300,000 people by March 2023
The Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) aims to grant citizenship to 300,000 people this fiscal year. This is an increase of 50% from the previous year. The IRCC will invest $15 million in the Citizenship Program this fiscal year.
The government’s goal is to grant citizenship to as many new Canadians as possible and encourage them to participate in Canadian life by voting, volunteering, and running for office. IRCC plans to expand its programs that promote integration and inclusion of new Canadians into their communities across the country.
Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) is looking to process a total of 285,000 decisions. A decision can be seen as a review of an application and reviewed as approved, denied, or marked as incomplete. IRCC looking to 300,000 new citizens by March 31, 2023. The new citizenship target means at least 300,000 approved applicants must take the oath of citizenship, whether in person or virtually. The graph of citizenship applications between 2021-2022 shows a significant increase. This even exceeds the pre-pandemic targets for 2019-2020, when 253,000 citizenship applications were processed.
IRCC has been facing current challenges that involve processing applications, however, IRCC ensuring that positive decisions can take the oath of a citizenship in a reasonable timeframe.
IRCC says it has taken various steps to clear backlog, and processing 80% of all new applications within service standards. To speed up processing time, 1,000 new staff have been hired. Also there are plans to expand access to the citizenship application status tracker. Minors below 18 will be eligible apply for citizenship online by the end of 2018.
