Yes you are right for the first part. Check what Canadian Bar Association's Immigration Section chair has to say about it:Yeah 100%. To be FSW - Inland you have to have residence. To have residence you need a long-term permit of some sort - student. work, something less common idk.
FSW-Inland aren't getting processed because
1. FSW are not getting processed (reasons unclear - I have no real idea)
2. IRCC's internal system was not built to differentiate between Inland/Outland within a stream. (my guess - pretty confident, I work in tech)
Fingers crossed something changes. There are still poor people with some December 2018 AORs who haven't gotten CoPR... all outlanders, I think. I would have given up long ago if I were them. We are in better shape, at least.
"Yes, IRCC is able to search and identify applications on the basis of applicants present inside Canada (Inland) or outside Canada(Overseas)."
Now if IRCC chooses, they can advise their officers to find and prioritize all Inland applicants based among the application assigned to them.
As of March 31, 2021, there were close to 4000 FSW-Inland applications in the inventory of IRCC (this number was also obtained using the ATIP request). I think all FSW-Inland candidates should unite and do a class action lawsuit against IRCC for denying procedural fairness, because a an undue delay is denial of procedural fairness. https://www.canada.ca/en/immigration-refugees-citizenship/corporate/publications-manuals/operational-bulletins-manuals/service-delivery/procedural-fairness.html