Blog - Latest News
You are here: / / IRCC Cutting 500,000 Temporary Residents from Canada

IRCC Cutting 500,000 Temporary Residents from Canada

/in , /by

We meet with individuals every day who want to come to Canada or stay in Canada. When the Liberals were elected and for many years thereafter, they ramped up immigration. New programs. Expanded streams. Pilot projects. Expanding the system. During those years, Canada welcomed a record number of international students, workers and other temporary residents. They created the popular TR to PR pathway. Those days are over.

The current Liberal government is extremely unpopular, losing a byelection that was a stronghold for decades. The housing crisis has been blamed on immigration (to be clear, I do not share this opinion). I have also read reports that high inflation is also being connected with high immigration numbers. Immigrants and international students are easy targets for lazy politicians who are feeding off public unrest.

New Dark Era for Immigration

I have published articles on the changes to Canadian immigration over the past months. IRCC Minister Marc Miller announced the goal to reduce the number of temporary residents from 6.2% to 5% of the population. According to this Reuters article:

But the Liberal government has also come under political pressure for its immigration policies, with critics arguing they have exacerbated a housing crunch. Some services provided by the provinces, such as education and healthcare, are also struggling to keep up with population growth.
The government wants to reduce temporary residents to 5% of the total population over the next three years from 6.5% in 2023, Miller said. That would be a cut of about 20% from Canada’s 2.5 million temporary residents in 2023.
These cuts would lead to 500,000 fewer temporary residents in Canada. This group includes international students, temporary foreign workers, visitors and other groups.
IRCC has been cutting programs and restricting access to the system. The online Webform was amended in 2023 to restrict access and make it more difficult to send updates to Officers. For Study Permits, the PAL system was implemented to further restrict the number of students coming from abroad.
Despite these changes, the Team at CIL have been successful with our clients. We continue to see our application approved and we love helping to guide our clients, despite the new restrictions.

Refusals and Appeals

The IRCC announcements and cuts will likely lead to a significant increase in application refusals and appeals. To appeal a decision by an IRCC Officer, one potential recourse would be litigation. Litigation is both difficult and requires particular expertise. I would guess that most immigration lawyers do not litigate. The Federal Court of Canada is currently overwhelmed with a huge backlog of cases waiting for judicial review. To be clear, an ALJR is a review process. The Applicant is limited in the disclosure process. They cannot, for example, submit a new application to the Court. The Court does not have the power to issue a Study Permit or a Work Permit.
The policy at CIL is that we only litigate files when we have done the underlying application. We meet many applicants who have hired shady agents or incompetent consultants. Those people may have filed poor applications on their behalf and their applications are rejected. They come to us for help. In many cases, it does not make sense to go to Court as the underlying application is poor. We cannot argue to a judge that the application should have been accepted.
The decision to hire the best professional is often the most important decision by an Applicant. This decision may have serious immigration consequences.
Success: Super VisaSuccess: MPNP Nomination Certificate