IRCC to grant citizenship to 300,000 people by 31st March 2023

by Mansi Sahai Published on 29/Oct/2022

According to a memo drafted by Operations, Planning, and Performance division of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC), Canada is planning to grant citizenship to a total of 300,000 people by March 31, 2023. Also, the IRCC will seek to process over 285,000 decisions

A decision on an application is applicable for review or analysis, which is later either approved, rejected, or marked as incomplete. While the citizenship target means a total of 300,000 approved applicants will take the citizenship oath either in person or virtually.

Number of Canadian citizenship applications processed

There has been a significant hike compared to the 2021-2022 fiscal year and pre-pandemic targets for 2019-2020, where 253,000 citizenship applications were processed by the IRCC.

Fiscal year	Citizenship applications
2019-2020	253,000
2021-2022	217,000
2022-2023	116,000

IRCC Opting for Digital Applications Processing

Due to the global pandemic back in 2020, IRCC was unable to process most of the applications. The primary reason behind this was that the IRCC was only processing paper-based applications received at a central location. Also, since all in-person meetings were canceled, IRCC was not conducting interviews – resulting in no oath swearing at citizenship ceremonies.

However, now a majority of applications are being processed digitally, and the number of applications processed digitally will increase.