@legalfalcon Hi
Sir, there is a floating worry that if Conservatives wins the election, they might clear all the huge backlogs by cancelling all our applications in order to blame the current gov. Do you think there is a possibility for such things to happen?
What is your opinion about the effect that this election might have on the FSWO? What is the worst for us that we can expect whoever wins it?
Please share your views as we can be a little relaxed to hear your in-depth analysis on it for us. thanks
One of the biggest myths is that liberals are pro immigrants and conservatives are not. Under the liberals, the backlogs have increased.
It was the conservatives that actually revamped the immigration system in 2015 by bringing in the Express Entry, which is now the flagship program of Canadian Immigration. The processing time was brought down by EE from 3 years to 6 months for economic immigrants.
No political party in Canada is anti-immigrant. The only contention is about legal immigration. Conservatives support legal immigration and do not want people jumping the queue.
Finally, an election does not change the immigration policy. It may change the numbers a little, but Canada will remain open to immigrants, whether it is the conservatives or liberals. In the end, you have to see who manages things better. Going by the track record, it is the conservatives that have managed immigration better.
Just by announcing large numbers, you cannot make the process streamlined. You need proper laws, updating the systems and allocate additional resources to IRCC.
As regards cancelling the applications, that will not happen.
This happened in 2012 due to Bill C-38, which was later known as Canada’s
Jobs, Growth and Long-Term Prosperity Act. IRCC was facing a lot of issues. IRPA was amended and section 87.3 was introduced, which gave the power to the Immigration Minister to issue Ministerial Instructions (MI) to streamline the process and fix quotas.
In 2008, over 600,000 applicants were awaiting processing and the number continued. However, the Act created section 87.4 of the IPRA, a provision which had the effect of unilaterally terminating all FSW applications submitted before 27 February 2008 which had not received a decision based on selection criteria before 29 March 2012.12 This amounted to a total of approximately 280,000 applications being rejected.
After this, the express entry was brought in 2015.
However, we are currently nowhere close, and the power of the ministerial instructions is in place with the Minister, who uses it for all draws and can also exercise them to streamline the process. This is why no new FSW draw has taken place in the last few months.
Also, most pending applications have already crossed most stages and some even have a decision made. It is just a matter of borders opening and issuance of COPR.
I highly doubt that the same 2012 situation will repeat.
