How the Pandemic Pressured Canada to Rethink Immigration

By Maggie Belcher

On December 31st, 2019, the Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (“IRCC”) set the 2021-2023 Immigration Levels Plan.[1] It included goals of reaching 401,000 new permanent residents in 2021, 411,000 in 2022, and 421,000 in 2023.[2] In March of 2020, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau stated, “we will be denying entry to Canada to people who are not Canadian citizens, or permanent residents.”[3] Due to travel restrictions implemented to prevent the spread of Covid-19, Canada stopped accepting applications from individuals abroad, including skilled workers.[4] However, at the end of 2021, the Canadian government reached its goal of admitting 401,000 new permanent residents.[5] Even though its borders were essentially closed, Canada surpassed its goal, setting a record since 1913.[6] How is this possible and why was meeting this goal so important?

The Covid-19 pandemic has affected numerous areas of our lives, and there is no exception when it comes to immigration. Though Covid-19 has limited immigration internationally, Canada has taken this opportunity to expand its immigration system in hopes that it will help the country overcome the pandemic. “Immigration is increasingly becoming the primary, if not the only, source of labor force growth,” said Andrew Agopsowicz, a senior economist at the Royal Bank of Canada.[7] Canada has low birth rates and an aging population that make it dependent on immigration.[8] For example, in 2019, international migration accounted for 86 percent of population growth, a rate not seen in decades;[9] that year, Canada accepted 341,175 residents.[10] Then came Covid-19 and the number of permanent residents dropped by almost half to 184,595.[11]

Given that Canada’s workforce depends on immigration, there was an increase in job vacancies due to border closures.[12] Because Canada could no longer rely on people coming from abroad, the country focused its efforts on transitioning temporary residents to permanent residency. All new permanent residents “land” in Canada.[13]  A landing can refer to either someone who has arrived in Canada and received permanent status or someone who has temporary residence status that becomes permanent.[14]  The latter definition is the reason Canada has reached its goal of 401,000 permanent residents. Given that the border was closed to many, Canadian officials focused their energy on people already in Canada.  For example, roughly 70 percent of economic-class immigrants[15]  landed from within Canada, with the other percentage landing from abroad.[16] Many who qualified for permanent residency arrived in Canada as high-skilled temporary foreign workers (“TFW”) in the Temporary Foreign Worker Program (“TFWP”), international students (“IMP”), or refugee claimants whose asylum claims had been accepted by the Immigration and Refugee Board (“IRB”).[17] To increase the number of permanent residents, the IRCC took five important steps:

1)    It launched six new pathways to permanent residence.[18] The pathways were designed to increase permanent residency for essential workers.[19]

2)    It created the “Guardian angels” program, which granted permanent residency to asylum claimants working in health care.[20]

3)    It decreased the required points for the Express Entry Pool.[21] Previously the minimum score needed for an invitation was 400 points, now one is invited with 75 points.[22] As a result, in 2021, more than five times the number of invitations were issued to candidates in the Express Entry pool compared to those issues before the pandemic.[23]

4)    It implemented the TR to PR pathway, allowing people with temporary residence status to apply for permanent residency.[24] This included 40,000 recent international student graduates, 20,000 health-care workers, and 30,000 people in other “essential” jobs.[25]

5)    It began digitalizing permanent residence and citizenship applications.[26]

While the short-term goal of keeping people in Canada is achievable, critics argue that these new initiatives could have been designed better to address issues with processing times and backlogs.[27] At the end of 2021, the IRCC stated there were more than 1.8 million applications backlogged, which included, “future citizens, permanent residents, international students, temporary workers, and visitors.”[28] Specifically, the permanent residence’s application category are backlogged by a total of 525,270 persons.[29] Increasing access to permanent residency status further overwhelms the system.

Furthermore, economists question whether these policy changes will have long-term solutions to the economic problems spurred by the pandemic. The Conference Board of Canada in 2018 said that if there was no immigration, “Canada’s average annual rate of economic growth by 2034 would shrink by 0.6 points.”[30] As Andrew Agosowicz, a senior economist at the Royal Bank of Canada put it, the temporary pool is something Canada can draw from, “but it’s not a bottomless well.”[31]

However, Harald Bauder, professor at Ryerson University in Toronto, exclaimed that there is value for temporary residents to become permanent residents because “they are uniquely exploitable but also essential” and a pathway to permanent residency is necessary for them.[32] Canadian Immigration Minister Marco Mendecino equally states that there are benefits to having people “put roots down and become more established in these jobs.”[33]

Though there are questions about the efficacy of Canada’s plan to increase the number of permanent residents, Canada is doing something that a lot of countries have overlooked: continuing to address immigration as it pertains to people already within the country -and doing so may be what helps Canada get through the global pandemic.

[1] 2020 Annual Report to Parliament on Immigration, Immigr., Refugees and Citizenship Canada, (Dec. 31, 2019) https://www.canada.ca/en/immigration-refugees-citizenship/corporate/publications-manuals/annual-report-parliament-immigration-2020.html#plan.

[2] Id.

[3] Eric Levenson and Chuck Johnston, Canada is Closing its Borders to Foreigners, with an Exception for US Citizens, CNN (Mar. 16, 2020), https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/16/world/canada-border-closing/index.html.

[4] Lauren Boorman, Did Covid-19 Improve Canada’s Immigration System?, CanadIM (Jan. 13th, 2022), https://www.canadim.com/news/did-covid-19-improve-canadas-immigration-system/.

[5] Canada Welcomes the Most Immigrants in a Single Year in its History, Immigr., Refugees and Citizenship Canada, https://www.canada.ca/en/immigration-refugees-citizenship/news/2021/12/canada-welcomes-the-most-immigrants-in-a-single-year-in-its-history.html (last visited, Jan. 14th, 2022).

[6] Id.

[7] Amanda Coletta, Canada Wants Immigrants but the Pandemic is in the way. So It’s Looking to Keep People Already Here, Washington Post (Aug. 7, 2021), https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/08/07/canada-immigration-pandemic/.

[8] Id.

[9] Id.

[10] Id.

[11] Id.

[12] Boorman, supra note 4.

[13] Fiona Harrigan, Canada Granted Permanent Residency to a Recorder Number of People in 2021, Reason (Dec. 28, 2021), https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/16/world/canada-border-closing/index.html.

[14] Id.

[15] “high-skilled people who can perform jobs that are needed in the Canadian market.” Id.

[16] Id.

[17] Id.

[18] Shelby Thevenot, New PR Streams Now Live, CIC News (May 6th, 2021), https://www.cicnews.com/2021/05/new-pr-streams-go-live-today-0518031.html#gs.mi11q6.

[19] Id.

[20] Laura Osman, Covid-19 Might Have Lasting Impacts on the Way Canada Handles Immigraiton, Minister Says, CBC (Dec. 23, 2021), https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/pandemic-immigration-could-change-canada-1.6296792.

[21] The program is based on a points system that uses determining criteria such as age, education, and work experience. Victoria Esses et al., Supporting Canada’s Covid-19 Resilience and Recovery Through Robust Immigration Policy and Programs, Facets (May 13, 2021), https://www.facetsjournal.com/doi/full/10.1139/facets-2021-0014#ref82.

[22] Id.

[23] Id.

[24] Coletta, supra note 7.

[25] Id.

[26] Id.

[27] Id.

[28] Thevenot, supra note 18.

[29] Id.

[30] Anna Mehler Paperny, Analysis: Pandemic Spurs Canada to Offer Path to Citizenship to More Temporary Residents, Reuters (March 4, 2021), https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-canada-immigration/analysis-pandemic-spurs-canada-to-offer-path-to-citizenship-to-more-temporary-residents-idUSKBN2AW1BJ.

[31] Id.

[32] Id.

[33] Id.