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Minister Ahmed Hussen Visits Masjid Al Salam
8-15-2018
On Tuesday August 7th, Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship, The Honourable Ahmed Hussen visited BCMA Burnaby Branch Masjid Al Salam. While the minister was in the city he made plans to drop by and visit the mosque for the afternoon prayers.
Members of the Masjid congregation joined him in conversation about immigration issues. the minster highlighted who the Liberal Government in a short while cleared up a lot of backlog in Spousal immigration. The minister said, "we reduced the spousal sponsorship inventory from a high of 75,000 to 15,000 as of December 31, 2017, and are processing new spousal sponsorship applications within 12 months. To help spouses further, we extended the Open Work Permit Pilot for spousal sponsorship applicants and simplified the guides and checklists."
To help spouses further, the Government has extended the Open Work Permit Pilot for spousal sponsorship applicants and simplified the guides and checklists.
For International students the Government introduced expedited visa study permit through the Student Direct Stream. The program allows legal residents in China, India, the Philippines and Vietnam to apply for the expedited system.
The Global Skills Strategy has supported Canada’s economy and benefited 10,000 highly skilled workers and more than 100 employers.
IRCC has been able to reduce backlogs significantly and make family reunification a priority, thanks to a historic multi-year immigration levels plan. For example, the Live-In Caregiver Program (LCP) inventory was reduced from a high of 62,000 in May 2014, to less than 12,000 by April 2018.
The Govt. is on track to meet their 2017 commitment to process at least 80% of the remaining LCP backlog by the end of 2018, and are processing new LCP permanent residence applications within 12 months.
Minister Hussen also stated that with all these immigrants coming in to Canada, "the government is also investing $44 Billion in housing across Canada."
Other substantial improvements include:
- We partnered on new initiatives to better support Francophone immigration, such as the creation of a new Francophone Immigration Policy hub to support the Action Plan for Increasing Francophone Immigration Outside of Quebec. We also improved Francophone immigration services at Toronto’s Pearson International Airport.
- We changed our medical inadmissibility policy to ensure that our immigration policies better reflect the importance that the Government places on the inclusion of persons with disabilities.
- IRCC increased its presence in China, with 7 new visa application centres.
- To continue supporting clients applying from overseas, we plan to add additional visa applications centres internationally in 2018 and 2019.
- We changed the definition of the age of dependants from “under 19” to “under 22”, to enable more families stay together in Canada.
- We invested in an innovative pilot project to employ up to 1,300 newcomers in sustainable, long-term jobs in the hotel industry.
- We continue to meet the 6-month processing time for Express Entry applications in the Federal Skilled Worker Program and Canadian Experience Class.
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