Improving Processing Times, Welcoming More New Citizens – 200,000 Mark
2014/10/20 1 Comment
Significant increase and on track – the additional funding and streamlined process seems to be doing the trick:
Canada’s Citizenship and Immigration Minister Chris Alexander today announced that more than 200,000 people have joined the Canadian family since the start of 2014. The Minister also announced that the citizenship backlog has been reduced by 13 percent since June to its lowest level since spring 2012. These achievements are among the direct results of the government’s recent changes to citizenship processing.
Nearly 50,000 people have become Canadian citizens since a new decision-making process came into effect on August 1, 2014. That is a 172 percent increase from the same time period last year.
Recent reforms have also allowed decision-making officers to make progress on the backlog of so-called “non-routine” cases, including ones where residency questions persist. Almost half of all cases in which a residency questionnaire RQ was issued prior to November 2013 have been resolved with the applicants receiving their citizenship. Thousands more applicants who had been issued RQs are about to write their tests. These files will be evaluated by a record number of decision makers with the onus on applicants to prove they meet the requirements.
Trust with these good numbers, CIC will release the complete year figures early in 2015.
And of course, regular quarterly statistical reporting better than only reporting by press release!
Improving Processing Times, Welcoming More New Citizens – Canada News Centre.
About Andrew
Multicultural Meanderings 
The last I heard (early August) about the clause to restore citizenship to Lost Canadians was that it would not be implemented for at least a year: I don’t know any details about how that will happen or what might be requirements for those affected. I understand that it is limited to “first generation born abroad” so I will be excluded but I would like to see those with Canadian-born parents receive theirs. That will add more Canadians to the “family” mentioned by the Minister.
I just hope they don’t start stripping citizenship again, from all the dual citizens among the 200,000, which will reduce the number.