The number of immigrants through Express Entry may decrease

Last week, a Department of Immigration and Citizenship Canada document was released that caused confusion and a lot of rumours about what will happen to the Express Entry system in 2022. The document includes information on why Canada is not screening under the federal program for skilled professionals and working professionals starting in December 2020, and for specialists with Canadian work experience starting in September 2021. The document also expresses the intention to further postpone these draws.

As of January 2022, Express Entry selections are only for participants in provincial immigration programs.

The document is incomplete, so it is difficult to draw any conclusions from it, but it states that the lack of immigration selections is due to the long processing of applications. At the end of 2021, Express Entry had a backlog of 1.8 million people who were invited in selections and were waiting for their documents to be processed. The Department of Immigration is trying to shorten the waiting list, as well as the processing time to 6 months, as it used to be.

As noted in the document, the number of unprocessed applications increased because of previous travel restrictions, as well as the Ministry's desire to grant permanent residency first to those already in Canada in order to meet the immigration plan for 2021. As a result, applicants who applied to Express Entry from abroad were affected.

In addition, it says that the Department of Immigration is now considering options for the immigration plan for 2022-2024, namely how many invitations to allocate to the Express Entry system. Last year that number was 108,500, but now there's a chance it will drop to 50% because the priority for Canada is issuing permanent residency to temporary workers and resettling 40,000 refugees from Afghanistan. The exact immigration plan must be announced by February 14, 2022.

It is not clear from the document when selections will resume for skilled professionals, tradespeople and professionals with Canadian experience. There are now about 76,000 invited candidates pending, so Canada has no need to accept new applications for at least the first half of the year. Before selections are made, the Department of Immigration wants to at least halve the waiting list. This can be done in a few months, given that the Ministry is able to process up to 16,000 applications per month.

Express Entry system appeared in 2015. It uses a candidate assessment based on factors such as age, education, language skills, work experience, connections to Canada, etc. Based on years of research, the Department of Immigration argued that issuing invitations to candidates with the highest scores would allow those most likely to adapt to the country and build successful careers to move.

On the other hand, new research shows that immigrants selected through the system and who arrived during the crisis do less well than those who moved in times of a stable economy. At the same time, for candidates with provincial nominations, scores are not as important because they are low in such selections.

There is a view that Canada should resume the interrupted shenanigans and continue to invite candidates with high scores for reasons of fairness, since many people are making great efforts to score them. The second argument is that the issuance of PMLs to temporary workers does not lead to population growth in the country. In 2021, actual population growth was the lowest since 1915-1916, yet the country is seeing the highest labor force shortage in history deficit.

Still, professionals with Canadian experience, for whom the selection process ended in September 2021, are also worthy of consideration. As a rule, these are people who are employed by Canadian companies at the time of application. Since work visas are of limited duration, the lack of selections runs the risk of them overstaying their visas and leaving Canada, which in turn would lead to an even greater shortage of staff.

The announced immigration plan should bring some clarity to what is happening. It is constantly changing, so there is a possibility that this document will no longer be relevant.