CIMM – India – December 05, 2023

Key Facts And Figures

• In 2022, India was Canada’s top source country for permanent residents, accounting for 27% of admissions. It was also the top source country for temporary foreign workers (22%) and international students (45%).
• According to the 2021 Census, 1.35M people of Indian origin live in Canada.
• Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) offices in India, during normal operations, finalized more than 12,000 applications every week to clients in India (students, businesses, visitors, etc.). Many of these visa applications required interviews and other vetting by Canadian officers to guard against fraud and inadmissibility as well as oversight of visa printing.

Key Messages

• Following India's decision to unilaterally remove immunities for all but 21 Canadian diplomats and dependents in Delhi, the IRCC footprint in India was reduced from 27 to five Canada-based employees. IRCC will continue to accept and process applications from India, but this reduction impacts our services and clients.
• It is important to note that the vast majority of applications from India are processed outside of the country, with 89% of India’s applications processed through IRCC’s global network.
• The five Canada-based IRCC staff who remain in India will focus on work that requires an in-country presence such as urgent processing, visa printing, risk assessment and overseeing locally-engaged staff and key partners.
• Despite our efforts to redistribute work, there may be potential delays in processing applications, response times and returning documents to applicants.
• Canada has a strong connection with Indian citizens and will continue to welcome them, whether they wish to come here to visit, work, study, be reunited with loved ones or hopefully look to call Canada home.

Supplementary Information

• At current projections, we anticipate that the initial reduction in IRCC staff will lead to 17.5K fewer final decisions for the India caseload by the end of 2023 (globally for all applications). We will attempt to recover those in the future.
• Thus far, the IRCC inventory of visa applications for temporary residents from India has, in fact, been reduced since September 25, 2023, down from about 98K applications to about 96K applications as of
  November 2, 2023.
• The inventory of visa applications for permanent residents from India has been similarly reduced in recent months, down from about 71K applications as of September 25 to 67K applications as of November 2.
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