Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government is cutting back on new immigration for the first time in more than a decade, ushering in a new era for a country that once welcomed large numbers of immigrants.
Canada is expected to lower its annual target for permanent residents next year to about 395,000, a 21 per cent decrease from the original target of 500,000 set last year, said a government official who requested anonymity to discuss a matter that is not yet public. It is expected that this will happen. .
The annual target is also expected to be further reduced to approximately 380,000 in 2026 and 365,000 in 2027. The news was first reported by the National Post on Wednesday, and Immigration Minister Mark Miller is expected to present the final figures to Parliament on Thursday morning.
Permanent residents are an important part of Canada’s immigration system, which focuses on attracting young, highly educated workers to fill a rapidly aging workforce. The sharp decline to pre-pandemic levels shows the government is scaling back its immigration ambitions.
The wave of migrants that began to flow in after travel restrictions were eased in 2022 led to record population growth. The surge is equivalent to adding all of San Diego’s residents in a single year to a country slightly more populous than California, exacerbating the housing shortage, soaring rent prices, straining public services and increasing unemployment. Pushed up.
These pressures threatened long-held beliefs that mass immigration would give Canada an advantage in the global race to attract young workers to stem economic decline. The nation’s longest-running survey on immigration, conducted last week, found that for the first time in a quarter of a century, Canadians feel no stronger opposition to immigration levels.
However, permanent residents do not constitute the largest group of immigrants in recent years. Instead, the influx was driven by newcomers coming to study and work on temporary visas with the aim of becoming permanent residents.
These so-called temporary residents have become a source of growing criticism of the Trudeau government, which has lost control of immigration. Prime Minister Trudeau and Prime Minister Miller are scheduled to announce their first-ever annual targets for temporary immigration on Thursday.
Prime Minister Trudeau has already set a goal to significantly reduce the number of temporary residents in the country over the next three years, including limiting the number of international students and the use of foreign workers.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
