Immigration Announcement
The Immigration Backlog in Canada Has Remained Unchanged Since January
According to the latest update from Immigration, Refugees, and Citizenship Canada (IRCC), Canada’s immigration backlog remained consistent at 2.1 million as of January 31 – February 1, 2023.
Since July 2021, inventory across all lines of business has progressed as follows:
- January 2-3 2023: 2,152,220 persons
- December 3, 2022: 2,243,097 persons
- November 3, 2022: 2,411,388 persons
- September 30, 2022: 2,600,000 persons
- August 31, 2022: 2,583,827 persons
- July 15-17, 2022: 2,679,031 persons
- June 1-6, 2022: 2,387,884 persons
- April 30-May 2, 2022: 2,130,385 persons
- April 11 and 12, 2022: 2,031,589 persons
- March 15 and 17, 2022: 1,844,424 persons
- February 1, 2022: 1,815,628 persons
- December 15, 2021: 1,813,144 persons
- October 27, 2021: 1,792,404 persons
- July 6, 2021: 1,447,474 persons
The Current Flow of Inventories
As of February 1, the citizenship inventory shows 302,980 applicants, compared to 301,388 on January 3. As of January 31, there were 523,557 permanent residents in the database, compared to 521,552 on January 2. Also on January 31, there were 1,294,974 temporary residents on the record compared to from 1,329,280 on January 2. Consequently, the temporary residence inventory shows a decrease of 34,000 applications between the months of January and February.
| Immigration Category | No. of Persons as of January 31-February 1, 2023 |
| Permanent Residence | 523,557 |
| Temporary Residence | 1,294,974 |
| Citizenship | 302,980 |
| Grand Total | 2,121,551 |
Express Entry and PNP Inventories
Currently, there are 47,868 Express Entry applications awaiting processing. The inventory experienced a decrease of 541 since January 3 data. The data at that time showed a total of 48,409 applications.
In July, the IRCC resumed inviting Express Entry candidates from all programs. Due to IRCC’s struggles to meet its service standard of processing Express Entry applications within six months, draws were limited to candidates in the Provincial Nominee Program (PNP) between September 21, 2021, and July 6, 2022. After pausing the number of Express Entry invitations for Federal Skilled Worker Program (FSWP) and Canadian Experience Class (CEC) candidates, IRCC has returned to its six-month service standard for candidates who have received a permanent residence invitation since July 6.
The PNP shows an inventory of 66,214 applications for base and enhanced programs. The increase in PNP is not significant from the month of January data which stood at 62,720 applicants.
Family Class Inventory
A slight drop in the number of applications for all family-class immigration programs has been reported to 124,771 down from 125,631 on January 3.
The Spouses and Partners program stood with a record of 61,191. There is very a slight decrease reduction as compared to January 3 which stood at 61,481.
The Parents and Grandparents Program shows an inventory of 52,801 persons. The inventory showed 52,960 applicants who were on wait for decisions in January.
About Service Standards
According to the IRCC website that keeps track of all applications. The backlog of applications is defined as those that are not processed within the service standard for their program.
In order to meet the backlog, IRCC strives to handle 80% of applications from all business lines, within service standards. Depending on the kind of application, a different service standard applies. It takes more than 6 months for other economic class categories. For spousal and child family class sponsorship states a period of time of around 12 months, and temporary residence applications take 60-120 days.
