Canada immigration policy: How new rules will benefit Indians

Canada is increasing its immigration targets yet again to fuel post-pandemic growth and help fill critical labour shortages. This is good news for Indians who want to get settled as they comprise the single largest source country for immigrants to Canada.

Canada aims to attract about 1.3 million new immigrants over the next three years, overall admissions amounting to 1.14% of the Canadian population by 2024. These are the targets the Canadian govt is looking at:

2022: 431,645 permanent residents.

2023: 447,055 permanent residents.

2024: 451,000 permanent residents.

The majority of immigration into Canada is in the economic class, with Indians making for almost 60% of those numbers, according to a Hindustan Times report. 

The 2021 Annual Report to Parliament on Immigration, tabled this week, showed that India remains the largest source country for immigrations into Canada. 

“The arrival of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020 reduced the intake severely, but of the 184,606 permanent residents admitted that year, Indians accounted for 42,876, or 23% of the total and almost two-and-a-half times the numbers for the next highest, China, at 16,535,” according to the report. 

India has consistently been the biggest source country since 2017, when it overtook China among permanent residents (PRs). In 2019, as many as 85,593, Indian-origin PRs, a quarter of the total, were admitted into Canada.

In 2021, Canada welcomed more than 405,000 new permanent residents—the most immigrants in a single year in Canada's history. The Canadian government has struggled to clear a backlog of about 1.8 million visa/citizenship due to covid-19.