Canadian Citizenship Applications Rising

There is a growing interest among permanent residents in Canada to become Canadian Citizens.

The changes in rules last October 2017 made citizenship application easier for aspiring citizens. For example, instead of four years in the last six, the Liberal government scaled it to three out of five-year physical presence requirement.  The years spent as a temporary foreign worker, international student, or temporary resident may be counted half in computation. So, if the required physical presence is three years, a maximum credit equivalent to one year will be rewarded to those who have stayed for more than two years. Also, they adjusted the age group for language and knowledge requirements from 14-64 to 18-54.

In recent years, application for Canadian citizenship declines.

Data from the Immigration, Refugee, and Citizenship shows there was an average of 3,653 a week in the last six months prior to these changes.

The changes may have sparked the recent upsurge of applicants. In the week after the rules have taken effect, there were 17, 500 citizenship applications followed by 12, 530 a week later. Subsequent figures are yet to be released as of this writing.

According to Kathleen Harris, senior writer for CTV News, there has been an average of 200,000 applications forwarded annually.

Photo: Brian Howell