Now it is final: Those federal skilled worker applications submitted before February 27, 2008 still in the queue will never be processed. Citizenship and Immigration Minister Jason Kenney says that this is necessary because Canada’s economy needs have changed and processing applications up to 8 years “out of date” does not make sense. Toronto immigration lawyer Jeff Li believes that, while such a reasoning is not completely without merit, it is fundamentally unfair to those applicants who were misled by Citizenship and Immigration Canada.
“They were given the hope that one day they would be able to immigration to Canada,” said Jeff Li. “They submitted their applications, paid the processing fees, and waited patiently for years, only to learn that their applications will be returned unprocessed, and that their fees, once taken by the Government of Canada, be refunded.” According to Jeff Li, it is likely that such a government decision be judicially challenged at the Federal Court of Canada.
Below is Citizen and Immigration Canada’s press release with respect to the decision.
Ottawa, March 30, 2012 — To create a fast and flexible immigration system that creates jobs and promotes Canada’s long term prosperity, the Government of Canada will eliminate the backlog in the main federal economic immigration program.
“The Federal Skilled Worker Program backlog is a major roadblock to Canada’s ability to respond to rapidly changing labour market needs,”
said Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism Minister Jason Kenney. “Having to process applications that are as many as eight years out of date reduces our ability to focus on new applicants with skills and talents that our economy needs today.”
As announced in Economic Action Plan 2012, Citizenship and Immigration Canada is planning to refund fees and return stale applications from nearly all those applicants who applied under the dated criteria in existence before February 27, 2008.
CIC is transforming its suite of economic immigration programs to create a just-in-time system that recruits people with the right skills to meet Canada’s labour market needs, fast tracks their immigration, and gets them working in a period of months, not years. Eliminating the longstanding backlog of FSW applications will allow the Department to focus resources on facilitating the arrival of skilled immigrants who apply under the current eligibility criteria.
Under proposed legislation, CIC will close the files of FSW applicants who applied before February 27, 2008, and for whom an immigration officer has not made a decision based on selection criteria by March 29, 2012. This is expected to affect around 280,000 applicants, including their dependants. CIC will begin the process of returning the full amount of fees paid to the Department by these affected FSW applicants. For those who have passed the selection criteria stage – approximately 20,000 people – CIC will continue processing their applications until they are approved for entry into Canada or not.
Over the last decade, the number of FSW applications received has greatly exceeded the space available within the Immigration Levels Plan each year, resulting in long processing times and an increasing inventory. Under the 2008 Action Plan for Faster Immigration,CIC began to limit intake to priority occupations. The Department added caps to the number of new applications in 2010. As a result of these efforts, CIC has reduced the pre-2008 backlog by more than 50 percent, and the overall FSW inventory by over 25 percent. However, without further action, some FSW applicants might have to wait until 2017 for a decision.
“It’s unreasonable to keep applicants waiting for another five years,”
said Minister Kenney. “It’s also a far cry from the nimble and responsive immigration system Canada needs to remain a destination of choice.”