Aspirants for Canadian permanent residency can kick off the New Year with sheer ebullience. John McCallum, Minister of Immigration, Refugee and Citizenship Canada, has announced that the number of invitations to be provided for the year 2017 would remain equal to the ITAs provided in 2016.
Rolling out 300,000 ITAs would definitely be an arduous task but would also be one that behooves Canada’s economy. No one is a stranger to the fact that Canada is facing a dire situation of aging population. Immigration can definitely be the one stop solution for Canadians to abate the effect of this ticking time bomb.
Indian applicants can benefit even further from the recent announcements. According to this article, the number of invitations, allocated to programs through which most Indians apply, has been substantially increased. The invitations reserved for economic class has gone up from 160,060 to 172,500. Family migration has also seen a considerable increase from 4,000 to 84,000.
These two programs were the leading routes for Indians to gain a Canadian PR. An increase to 450,000 invitations was proposed but McCallum thought of it as an aspiration that would be quixotic for now but fairly possible in the future.
