IRCC has extended the pause on invitation rounds in the Federal Skilled Workers (FSW) and Federal Skilled Trades (FST) programs from November 1, 2021, to January 31, 2022, according to an internal memo.
The FSW and FST draws have been on hold since December 2020 because of the COVID-19 pandemic. In addition, the memo admits that the current inventory includes enough candidates to meet the quota allocation for 2022.
Further, the memo stated that in order to meet the six-month processing time, the inventory had to be reduced by half before the renewal of the FSW and FST. The average processing time for FSW candidates has increased to over 20 months, while in the CEC it remains about 7 months.
The possibility of extending the general admission intakes will be announced in the Immigration Levels Plan for 2022-2024. As a result of travel restrictions inhibiting the processing of overseas economic applications, the department has held off on issuing Federal Skilled Worker (FSW) invitations since December of 2020.
In order to increase the number of eligible Canadians who could apply for permanent residence in 2021, the Department created the Temporary Resident to Permanent Resident Pathway (TR2PR) and invited large numbers of Canadian Experience Class (CEC) applicants.