Toronto 
Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) says the department has processed approximately 4.8 million applications this year including citizenship, and temporary and permanent residence visas.
As per the news release, this is nearly twice the 2.5 million applications processed during the same period last year.
The 4.8 million applications include 670,000 study permits, 700,000 work permits, and hundreds of thousands of visitor visas. Canada processed over 260,000 visitor visas in November alone.
150 years of immigration in Canada/ Credit: Statistics Canada
This year, Canada expects to welcome over 431,000 new permanent residents breaking the previous record of 405,000 set last year. The 2021 numbers surpassed the previous high numbers set in 1913 when more than 400,000 immigrants arrived in the country.
IRCC expects a record number of new Canadian citizens in 2022–2023. Approximately 251,000 new citizens were welcomed from April to November.
IRCC applications at a glance: Inventories and backlogs/ Credit: Canada.ca
The department also reduced backlogs caused by the pandemic by nearly half a million applications in the last four months alone.
IRCC says the department is processing all new spousal sponsorship within the service standard of 12 months and new Express Entry applications within 6 months. Permanent residents can also expect shorter wait times when renewing their permanent resident cards as IRCC has reduced its pandemic backlog of applications for card renewals by 99%.
According to the news release, the department is on track to meet its goal to process 80% of new applications within service standards for most programs.
The federal government has set an ambitious target of granting permanent residency to 1.5 million people from 2023 to 2025.
