Bad news for the Express Entry system

The Express Entry system includes the Canadian Experience Class, Federal Skilled Worker, Federal Skilled Trade, and sometimes Provincial Nominee Program applications. This article does not deal with Provincial Nominee Program applications.

On February 14, 2022 IRCC tabled with Parliament its permanent resident processing targets for 2022. Overall, IRCC hoped to process 431,645 applications in 2022. Their target in 2021 was 401,000 applications. In 2021 they hoped to process 108,500 Express Entry applications (excluding PNP). In 2022 the number has dropped to roughly half – 55,900 applications. There are an additional 40,000 spots set aside for people under such categories as the Temporary Resident to Permanent Resident Pathway. These 40,000 spots do not help anyone who is thinking about applying to Canada for permanent residence as those applications were filed in May, 2021. The number of applications that will be accepted under the Family Class and other categories go up slightly. The number of people who will be processed as refugees is estimated to go up from 59,500 in 2021 to 76,545 in 2022. Most of these extra spots are probably to be taken by Afghanis under the August 2021 "special program" for people fleeing Afghanistan.

It has been known for some time that the Express Entry system had collapsed. On January 21, 2022 the National Post reported that due to misallocating resources in 2021 (and probably 2020 also) the Express Entry program had accepted too many applications and intake into the Express Entry streams would be paused probably at least until the summer of 2022. Applicants can still file Profiles, but no Invitations To Apply will be granted. Further, processing of these applications will be extremely delayed.