Recently, Immigration Minister Chris Alexander stated that the focus of future work will be the implementation of the "Expression of Interest" (EOI) system for selecting economic immigrants, which is believed to significantly reduce the backlog and shorten the processing time to 6 months.
In an year-end interview with the Postmedia media group, Alexander pointed out that the biggest challenge for immigration operations in 2014 was how to provide better and faster services to immigrant and visitor visa applicants. Although he will submit a major Citizenship Act reform bill to Parliament in the coming months, he emphasized that next year's work focus will be on planning the EOI, which will be implemented on January 1, 2015, as a selection system for various economic immigration classes.
Under the EOI system, prospective immigrants first fill out an expression of interest form online, listing their skills, work experience, and language ability, etc. As long as they meet certain specific conditions, they can be placed in a "pool of applicants" and ranked according to the latest labor market demand. The federal, provincial governments, and employers can then invite the best candidates from the pool, including those who already have job offers, to apply for immigrant visas.
He explained that because of this, the government no longer needs to process all cases. Applicants who are not selected within a specific period will have their cases discarded, so naturally, no backlog will be created, and the processing time will also be significantly reduced.