India Canada Diplomatic Row: Canada anticipates processing half of Indian visa applications by December 2023
Toronto, October 27: Due to a recent reduction in on-the-ground staff, Canada has announced that it will only be able to process 20,000 out of the 38,000 visas for Indian applicants by the end of December this year.
During a meeting of the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration this week, Immigration Minister Marc Miller revealed that there are currently only five staff members responsible for on-the-ground visa processing in India, as reported by CIC News.
The Immigration, Refugees, and Citizenship Canada (IRCC), which handles visa applications, saw its staff reduced from 27 to just five members this month. This staff reduction came after India, in an effort to seek diplomatic parity, requested Canada to withdraw its 41 diplomats.
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The IRCC anticipates that there will be approximately 17,500 Indian visa applications pending at the beginning of 2024. However, there is hope that the government will return to normal processing for Indian applications by early 2024. This is expected as the immigration staff, initially pulled from India, reestablishes itself and resumes work in Canada and the Philippines, according to the IRCC.
To mitigate the impact of the reduced staff, the IRCC is adjusting the workload for Visa Application Centres (VACs), which already process the majority of applications from India. The IRCC stated in a release last week that a significant portion of Indian applications are already processed outside the country, with 89 percent of India's applications handled through the global network.
The five Canada-based IRCC staff members who remain in India will concentrate on tasks that require an in-country presence, such as urgent processing, visa printing, risk assessment, and overseeing key partners, as stated by the IRCC.
The department's objective is to process 80 percent of all applications within the established service standards, which can vary depending on the type of application. An application is considered to be in backlog when it has not been processed within the service standards.
IRCC has temporarily suspended all in-person services at consulates in India, although applications from India are still being accepted and processed.
Meanwhile, India partially resumed visa services in Canada from October 26 after they were suspended amid deteriorating diplomatic relations. These services have resumed for entry, business, medical, and conference visas, as announced by the Indian High Commission. The statement from the High Commission also indicated that further decisions would be communicated based on an ongoing evaluation of the situation.
- With inputs from agencies
