The immigration system of Canada has been significantly impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2019, after welcoming 341,000 new immigrants, Canada kept on accepting high levels of new immigrants at the beginning of the last year, but the immigration system completely was upended when in March 2020 COVID-19 emerged as a crisis worldwide.
COVID-19 travel restrictions of Canada have been in effect since 18th March, limiting the numbers of foreign nationals entering the country currently. However, PNP, Express Entry System, and other immigration processing forms continue functioning, and immigration services in India have played their roles properly.
The fluid nature of the COVID-19 crisis denotes many remains as to what we can anticipate from the immigration system of Canada in 2021. But, there are certainties in place that will benefit Canada as well as future newcomers in 2021 and beyond.
Canada’s immigration system will not come back to normal until the pandemic gets over. The end of the pandemic luckily is in view for the emergence as well as approval of several vaccines. Canada started the biggest campaign for vaccination in its history in December. It aims at vaccinating all those wanting COVID-19 inoculations by September 2021.
Vaccinating residents of Canada will be one element to coming back the country and its immigration system to normal. The other aspect is confirming the worldwide population and foreign nationals travelling into Canada are free from the virus.
COVID-19 Restrictions in Canada
Travel restrictions put into action by Canada throughout 2020 offer some sense of what COVID-19 policies it could keep on enforcing even as the outbreak of COVID starts to subside. These policies are properly abided by migration consultants in India. For instance, Canada could continue keeping its 14-day quarantine law and the requisite to acquire a negative COVID-19 test before travelling into Canada in place to assist in limiting the outbreak of the virus within its borders.
It is vital to stress that the crisis has not imposed impacts on Canada’s resounding commitment to welcoming immigrants, international students, and temporary foreign workers. Canada has doubled down on this commitment for the crisis. Under its new Immigration Levels Plan 2021-2023, Canada intends at welcoming more than 400,000 new immigrants per year that is the highest level in its history. If you want to immigrate, you can talk to immigration consultants in India.
While it is difficult to imagine that Canada can meet this target in 2021 as the pandemic continues, the higher targets facilitate Canada’s provincial and federal governments for continuing to grasp immigration draws as well as process applications.
The reason for this is, if Canada cannot physically welcome as many new immigrants as it desires in 2021, it can proffer necessary approvals to them so that they can shift to Canada at a later date.
However, the vaccine emergence lets the Canadian government explore potential changes to its travel restrictions. For instance, Canada can explore lifting travel restrictions on newcomers, received a COVID-19 vaccine, and also providing a negative COVID-19 test before entering the country.
The lifting of such restrictions would assist newcomer flows in recovering that would provide the economy of the country a much-required upgradation. The rationale behind the 2021-2023 Immigration Levels Plan is that a remarkable increase in Canada’s newcomer intake is required to support the post-COVID economic recovery of Canada.
We should obtain a clearer picture of Canada’s immigration system’s direction. Justin Trudeau, the Prime Minister of Canada is due to offer new mandate letters to his cabinet members. Due to the pandemic, it has been delayed, but it is possible the letters finally will be unveiled this month. If so, a new mandate letter to Marco Mendicino, Immigration Minister will diagram what priorities the department of IRCC (Immigration, Refugees, and Citizenship Canada) will pursue over the years to come.
Another bit of certainty is IRCC has ensured that the PGP (Parents and Grandparents Program) lottery for 2020 intake will appear in early 2021. Up to 10,000 applicants will be invited for submitting sponsorship applications to bring their parents as well as grandparents to Canada. IRCC will open the 2021 PGP intake window, sometime later this year, and will grasp another lottery for inviting up to 30,000 applicants for sponsoring their grandparents and parents.
It is fair to anticipate that IRCC and the territories and provinces of Canada will seek to normalize the immigration system to the best of their abilities in 2021. We can anticipate at the very least and hope that 2021 will be a less turbulent year than 2020.
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