Ottawa: Canada has set a target of giving citizenship to 300,000 people in the financial year 2022-23. Canada’s move is likely to benefit most Indians.
Immigration, Refugee and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) said it has initiated processing a total of 285,000 applications and recommended that 300,000 more people be granted citizenship by March 31, 2023.
The department also said that youth below the age of 18 years will be able to apply online for citizenship at the end of the year. This number is much higher than the last financial year 2021-22. This is even higher than the targets of 2019-20 before the Covid-19 epidemic when the process of 253,000 citizenship applications was started.
The department could not consider applications in March 2020 due to the outbreak of the pandemic.
In the current fiscal year, Canada has welcomed 116,000 new citizens and is moving towards achieving the goal. During the same period, only 35,000 people were given citizenship in 2021. Although no data has been given on the number of people who have obtained citizenship according to the countries, it is believed that in 2022, most Indians have benefited from it.
According to a 2016 report, there are 1.4 million people of Indian origin in Canada. In 2021, nearly 100,000 Indians went to Canada under the temporary foreign worker programme and 130,000 received work permits under the international mobility programme. During 2021-22, 210,000 PRs also acquired Canadian citizenship.
They also issued 450,000 study permit applications, according to data released by the department. Canada has over 622,000 foreign students, of which 217,410 were Indians as of December 31 last year.
Due to the shortage of workers in Canada, it is expected that a large number of Indians will go to Canada for work and education in the coming years. According to the latest IRCC data, the backlog of migrants in the country is 2.6 million.