Concern over Canadian immigration levels

In early July, Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism Minister Jason Kenney announced he would be holding a number of consultations with the public and stakeholders to determine whether Canadian immigration levels should change.

In addition, the government recently cracked down on suspected war criminals in Canada illegally as well as people who obtained citizenship fraudulently.

However, Minister Kenney contends it is the ridiculous backlog that is becoming problematic and the changes – if any – would focus on reducing new applications in order to focus on older ones.

He told the Montreal Gazette this month that, “There’s an unlimited number of people who want to come to Canada. We used to have hundreds of thousands of applications more than we could process, and it’s stupid and unfair to make people wait seven, eight, nine years for their application to even be looked at,” he said.

As of June, Citizenship and Immigration Canada already capped some of the more popular immigration programs by half, including the Federal Skilled Worker Program.

Minister Kenney’s consultation will last until this fall, in which case it is imperative any immigration applications are sent in as soon as possible before any other immigration streams are cut.