Indians dreaming of moving to Canada will witness considerable delays in their visas getting processed due to the ongoing diplomatic dispute between India and Canada.

Canada’s Immigration Minister, Marc Miller, has just confirmed the news in a recent press conference held on October 19 in Ottawa. According to the statement, India is asking Canada to reduce its number of diplomats in India.

According to Canada’s Foreign Affairs Minister, Mélanie Joly, only 21 Canadian diplomats are stationed in India, whereas 41 diplomats have already left the country.

The diplomatic spat between the two countries originated when Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau made allegations against India for killing Hardeep Singh Nijjar.

IRCC has reduced its staff count in India from 27 to a meager 5. As per Miller, IRCC will continue to reduce the number of Canadian employees in India.

In a very reassuring gesture, Miller further stated that Canada will continue accepting and processing all temporary and permanent residency applications of clients in India and Canadians with family and friends in India. However, the processing speed will be hampered due to the limited number of staff deployed.

To offset the impact, IRCC is planning to rebalance the current workload of Visa Application Centres (VACs), where a bulk of the applications from India are already processed. Now some of the work needs to be completed via email.

As a result, Miller predicted that Indian services would be slower and processing would take longer. IRCC has backed Miller’s predictions and stated that clients may experience delays in:

• Queries getting resolved
• Application processing times
• Handing out visas and
• Returning passports

Because the VACs are run by third parties, they will continue to operate and function normally. As a result, getting administrative support, transmitting passports, and submitting their biometrics will be available to all applicants as usual at any of the ten IRCC centers in India.

Indian newcomers are pivotal in shaping the future of Canada, and IRCC will embrace them always, emphasized Miller in his statement. New students will be welcomed with open hands at Canada’s Designated Learning Institutions (DLIs), and fresh applications will still be processed, albeit at a significantly slower pace.

IRCC clarified in its statement that a sizeable chunk, amounting to 89% of the applications from India, are already getting processed outside India through IRCC’s global network.

The remaining 5 IRCC staff in India will look after only key tasks that strongly require an in-country presence, e.g., printing of visas, assessing risks, urgent processing, and overseeing strategic partners.

India currently tops the charts as Canada’s leading source country for newcomers. In 2022, Canada welcomed over 437,000 new permanent residents, 27% of whom (118,000) were Indians. Also, almost 60,000 Indians were granted Canadian citizenship in the same year.

Furthermore, Canada invited more than 226,000 Indian international students in 2022, which was a whopping 41% of the 551,000 new international students welcomed by Canada that year.

There are more than 100 different immigration pathways in Canada for the economic class. With their English language proficiency, high education, and work experience, Indians fit well into Canada’s immigration system.

Many students from India prefer to study in Canada before making up their minds about permanent residence.

For speedy disbursals of study permits to students, there’s a fast-track study permit pathway in Canada called the Student Direct Stream (SDS). According to IRCC reports, over 95% of SDS applications come from India, highlighting the fact that this option is quite popular among Indian students aspiring to study in Canada.