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The Government of Canada accepted roughly 7,300 immigration applications over the established limit because of a vulnerability in the Canadian immigration online system.
According to BleepingComputer, the hundreds of applications included documents belonging to graduate stream applicants from all over the world who were hoping to change their short-term visa status to permanent residency.
Apparently, an annual limit for the number of immigration solicitations that can be accepted in a year under each route is established by the Canadian immigration law.
For instance, by using an online app, qualified international degree holders in Canada can make a formal application to change their temporary residency status to permanent residence.
As seen on the Government of Canada website, someone is eligible for permanent residency if:
- they have work experience in Canada in an essential occupation or the health services sector;
- you recently graduated from a Canadian post-secondary institution.
This year, only 40,000 applications were supposed to be accepted, but a weakness in the Canadian immigration system led to the acceptance of an additional 7.300 applications.
Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) is a department of the Government of Canada that was established in 1994 following a reorganization. The department is responsible for matters dealing with immigration to Canada, refugees, and Canadian citizenship.
Philippe Couvrette, a government spokesperson declared:
Due to a technical issue, IRCC received applications above the limit for the international graduate stream of the temporary pathway to permanent residence.
In some cases where two or more applications were submitted simultaneously, the electronic application system counted them as a single application.
As a result, the electronic application system accepted approximately 7,300 applications above the 40,000 limit for this stream.
As stated by BleepingComputer, the Immigration Minister Marco Mendicino has been asked by the government department to permit the additional solicitations to be processed like the others. According to the law, without the minister’s approval, these applications would have to be returned to the applicants.
In the end, the Immigration Minister allowed the additional applications to be taken into consideration, saving the applicants from sanctions and problems they don’t deserve.
IRCC is processing the applications received above the limit to ensure the 7,300 applicants are not penalized due to a system error. IRCC also made changes to the system to make sure this no longer happens.
It should be a top priority for IRCC to improve its operations and offer prompt and well-organized service as more and more people decide to come to Canada and application volumes continue to increase.
IRCC has been moving towards a more integrated, modernized, and centralized working environment in order to help speed up application processing globally.
We move applications around our global network to ensure they are processed as efficiently as possible, which means applications may not be processed at or decided upon by decision-makers at the office closest to where a client lives, or where an application is submitted.