Canada is planning to increase the number of immigrants it accepts, with a goal of 475,000 by 2024. Indians will be one of the key beneficiaries of the initiative.
Canada is planning to increase the number of immigrants it accepts, with a goal of 475,000 by 2024. Indians will be one of the biggest benefactors of the strategy, as they are the single largest source of immigrants to Canada.
Minister of Immigration, Refugees, and Citizenship Sean Fraser announced the revised goals. The Immigration Levels Plan for 2022-24 proposes to keep the immigration rate at around 1% of the population, with 431,645 permanent residents in 2022, 447,055 in 2023, and 451,000 in 2024. The high end of the anticipated range for 2024, however, might reach 475,000.
The bulk of immigrants to Canada are from the working class, with Indians accounting for about 60% of the total.
India is the leading source country for immigration into the country, according to the 2021 Annual Report to Parliament on Immigration, which was submitted this week. The outbreak of the Covd-19 pandemic in 2020 drastically curtailed the intake, yet of the 184,606 permanent residents accepted that year, Indians accounted for 42,876, or 23% of the total and nearly twice as many as the next biggest country, China, with 16,535.
Since 2017, when it surpassed China in terms of permanent residents, India has been the leading source country (PRs). In 2019, 85,593 Indian-origin PRs were admitted to Canada, accounting for over a quarter of the total.
“Immigration has helped form Canada into the country it is today,” Fraser said in a statement. Immigrants are essential to Canada’s agricultural and fishing industries, as well as industry, healthcare, and transportation. We’re concentrating on economic recovery, and immigration is a major component of that.” The majority of immigrants in Canada come through economic class programmes. Prior to the pandemic, applications from within Canada accounted for 30% of new economic class landings, while applicants from outside accounted for 70%. In 2021, this was reversed, with 70% of passengers arriving from within Canada and 30% from outside.
To make up for low immigration in 2020, the government has increased the objective set in its Immigration Levels Plan for the years 2021 to 2023, which is 401,000 in 2021, 411,000 in 2022, and 421,000 in 2023.
