Recommendations of the Parliamentary Committee on Improving the Immigration System
Proposals include relaxing candidate admission rules and creating new programs.
The Parliamentary Committee on Immigration, which has at least one representative from each major political party, released the results of its study on how the COVID-19 pandemic has affected immigration to Canada. The report was presented in the House of Commons on May 13. It addressed issues related to economic immigration, family reunification and refugees.
Immigrants, lawyers and other stakeholders participated in the study. It described the problems that COVID-19 caused and presented 38 recommendations to Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada. The government has 120 days to respond to the report. While there is no obligation to change current policy, some of the recommendations have already been partially implemented or are in development.
Some of the changes proposed by the committee are described below.
Modernization of the immigration system
The Committee recommends that the immigration system be fully digitized so that applicants can apply for all programs electronically and that immigration officers conduct online interviews with applicants and issue immigration visas with a scannable barcode instead of putting a visa in their passport. Those who are granted immigrant visas should automatically be issued authorization to enter Canada.
Canada has already budgeted about $430 million CAD in the 2021 budget to build a new platform for electronic immigration processing within 5 years.
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