Planning to move to Canada? 2022 is a good year
Been wanting to move to Canada? Well, there's some good news for you. In its Immigration Levels Plan for 2021-2023, Canada originally announced that it plans to 'invite' 4,11,000 people into the country in 2022.
On February 15, the Federal Department of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship of Canada updated the number of invitees to 4,31,645 new permanent residents for 2022. The number of people planned to migrate and become permanent residents in Canada in 2023 also increased from 4,21,000 to 4,47,055.
The increase was done to compensate for the lack of immigrants in the country during the pandemic.
Immigration Minister Sean Fraser told CIC News, "This levels plan is a balance of needs for our country and our international obligations. It focuses on attracting skilled workers who will contribute to Canada’s economy and tackle the labour shortage, while recognising the importance of family reunification, and helping the world’s most vulnerable populations through refugee resettlement."
He further added, "Our focus remains on supporting our economic resurgence through increased retention of newcomers in regions with real economic, labour and demographic challenges. I’m proud of what Canada has achieved thus far, and I want wait to see how newcomers will continue to make Canada a top destination of choice."
In 2021, the country welcomed about 4,05,303 immigrants which was more than the country's original plan for 4,01,000 new residents.
WHY DOES CANADA NEED IMMIGRANTS? Canada has historically been known to have a low-birth rate and one of the oldest populations in the world, creating a huge gap area in the country's economic growth and labour force. Since the late 1980s, the country has actively begun welcoming immigrants into the country to shorten the gap.
Since 1988, Canada has been welcoming 2,00,000 people per year, and in the past couple of years, bumped up the number to almost 3,00,000.
It is expected that immigrants in 2022 will be arriving through the same methods that were utilised in 2021: Express Entry, Provincial Nominee Program and Temporary to Permanent Residence.
Canada expects to add in about 2,41,850 immigrants under the Economic category in 2022, the largest under any category, which is equivalent to 56% of the incoming immigrants.
HOW MUCH DO INDIAN IMMIGRANTS MAKE UP THE POPULATION? In 2021, Canada's population was about 38 million and about 32% of the new immigrants were from India.
Due to the pandemic in 2020, the country only admitted about 1,84,606 permanent residents and out of them, 23% were Indians.
As of December 2019, there were 1 million registered Indians in the country.