If you submitted your application prior to February 27, 2008 your application may never be processed.  Minister Jason Kenney expressed that he is considering wiping out the current immigration backlog by introducing new legislation.  This is similar to what New Zealand had done in 2003 to wipe its backlog.

In 2008, Minister Kenney gave priority to those applicants with specific work experience, and those who have job offers in Canada.  This did help to reduce the number of overall applications, however it did not help those who applied prior to 2008.  Those applications have been put on “hold”, if you will.  The Minister said that at 80 per cent of skilled workers are being pulled from the backlog, 20 per cent are newer applications chosen under the new criteria.

As of September 2011, the current backlog includes 472,549 skilled worker applicants, 96,085 business class applicants and their dependants.  The current worldwide wait for processing skilled worker applicants is approximately 8 years.  Some applications are taking nearly 15 years to process.

Minister Kenney is considering creating legislation that would wipe the current backlog and allow for more timely processing of newer applications from people who can improve Canada’s economy.  He proposed a “just-in-time” immigration system, one that would give me businesses a more important role in selecting immigrants.  New Zealand created a “pool” from which it selected those applicants who benefited the current economy.  Minister Kenney is planning to create a similar “pool” from which individual provinces could sift through applications for their own provincial nominee programs.

Hundreds of thousands of people have been waiting patiently for years for their applications to be processed.  In October of 2011, 128 upset skilled workers launched a law suits in the Federal Court pleading the court to order CIC to process the dusty files.  Now over 650 applicants from the following visa posts are involved: London, Vienna, Accra, Pretoria, Nairobi, Colombo, Singapore, Damascus, Bogota, Warsaw, New Delhi, Seoul, Port of Spain, Manila, Hong Kong and Beijing.

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