Sean Fraser, the minister of immigration, has announced that his department is ramping up hiring efforts to add 1,250 more staff members by the end of the fall to help clear up massive application processing backlogs.
End of July, over half of 2.4 million pending immigration applications have taken longer to process. Again, failing to meet the government standards to process applications on time.
Fraser promised to clear the COVID-19-related immigration backlogs by the end of the year in January, but that was before Canada made a significant effort to address the refugee situation brought on by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
According to Fraser, the long processing times are due to the government’s response to humanitarian crises in Afghanistan and Ukraine and technical updates for the government’s outdated system.
This July, the prime minister dedicated $85 million to clear the backlogs at the end of last year and said that ministers would create a task force to address the growing delays for immigration applications and other government services.
Further, Fraser explained that new hires had helped reduce wait time for new applicants in the Express Entry permanent residence program.
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