HomeAuthorVictor Ing, Author at Immigration Lawyer Vancouver, Canada | Sas & Ing Immigration Law Centre - Page 3 of 10

On November 1, 2022, the Honourable Sean Fraser, Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship, announced that his department plans on welcoming 500,000 new immigrants to Canada annually by 2025. The announcement comes on the heels of a record-setting year in 2021 when Canada welcomed over 405,000 newcomers. While most observers will focus on the 500,000 figure itself, it is important to also focus on the types of immigrants that the Minister is targeting.

On April 4, 2022 the Department of Employment and Social Development Canada (“ESDC”) announced sweeping new Temporary Foreign Worker Program ("TFWP") policies that will make it easier for Canadian employers to hire temporary foreign workers (“TFWs”) through the Labour Market Impact Assessment (“LMIA”) process. These policies come on the heels of strong economic reports showing that the Canadian economy has rebounded from the worst effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and that there is currently a high job vacancy rate in the country. Let’s review the three major changes that every employer needs to know!

As we enter the third year of the global COVID-19 pandemic, there are no longer any doubts that the pandemic has wreaked havoc on Canadian immigration application processing times. With a reported backlog of nearly two million applications, many applicants are losing patience with the Department of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) and are looking for ways to expedite their applications. Facing extraordinary delays, these applicants are turning to the judicial remedy of ‘mandamus’, which is an order issued by the Federal Court to compel a government department such as IRCC to process their applications.