2023 PR Stats: Or, Another Quiet Application Backlog Update
Think back to early 2023. Do you remember when IRCC found every media opportunity to announce how it had broken records in bringing 431,645 new permanent residents to Canada in 2022? That was a time of celebrating the value of immigration in Canada.
Now, in February 2024, IRCC has quietly published its 2023 figure of new permanent residents: 471,550. That’s over the precise target of 465,000, but its within the very generous targeted range of 410,000 to 505,000.
Screenshot from February 12, 2024: https://www.canada.ca/en/immigration-refugees-citizenship/corporate/mandate/stronger-immigration-system/permanent-residence.html
Last year, I wrote a grumpy blog post entitled “A Quiet Application Backlog Update” about how IRCC was ignoring temporary residents. Now, in 2024, no one can talk about anything but temporary residents (international students now and foreign workers coming next), and permanent residents are the ones who get the quiet backlog update.
The only place where IRCC has published the figure of how many new permanent residents it welcomed in 2023 is on its application backlog update page. There is nothing on the Notices page. Nothing on the News Releases page.
Ooof! What a mood shift! IRCC clearly read the room and did not want any more media attention on high numbers of new immigrants.
I agree with their public relations team. We’ve had too many negative opinion pieces about immigration in Canada.
I recognize that the Canadian public is experiencing cost-of-living and wage-related pressures that are related to immigration policy. And I recognize that the International Student Program is long overdue for some quality assurance.
But I do worry that too much negativity about short-term challenges could sour the Canadian public on immigration, which is essential for the medium- and long-term prosperity of the country.
And in order to ensure Canadians are on board with the long-term value of Canadian immigration, I think we need to invite feedback about whether we should re-vision our immigration system. In the past 10-15 years, Canada pursued a two-step immigration policy (come study/work first, then become a PR), which is not working out as well as we had hoped. I certainly don’t want Canada to look like the United Arab Emirates, with classes of permanent and non-permanent residents.
I don’t have the answers either, but I’m eager to be part of the conversation. (I also encourage you to read this piece by Tony Keller, who converses in the Globe & Mail. I don’t always agree with him, but I value what he says here.) And, as those of us with deep expertise in the field weigh in on what that future should look like, I believe we need to engage with people like my family in rural Manitoba who don’t think much about immigration on a daily basis but who see media headlines about it. We need to engage not just post-secondary institutions and major business interests but the regular people across the country who may not have a deep understanding of how important Canadian immigration is to the country. We need the entire country to understand the importance of immigration to Canada’s future and to help imagine about how to do it better. We all need to be committed to making sure that immigration works both for the people already in Canada and for the people who want to make Canada their future home.
How do we adapt our immigration system to achieve prosperity in Canada for all?
