The Toronto Star reports that, despite controversial measures introduced two years ago to speed up Canada’s immigration process, a backlog of pending federal skilled worker permanent residence applications appears to be re-emerging.

On November 28, 2008, Immigration Minister issued Ministerial Instructions regarding the processing of federal skilled worker cases filed on or after February 27, 2008. Federal skilled worker applications submitted on or after this date were required to meet specific criteria before they would be accepted. Subject to certain exceptions, only cases filed by applicants falling under one of the 38 listed occupations were eligible to apply. These Ministerial Instructions were considered controversial but were deemed necessary to eliminate the excessive backlog of pending cases.

According to an analysis of data provided by Citizenship and Immigration Canada (“CIC”), the average processing time from all visa posts is 7-1/2 years, with 600,000 people in the queue for the 80,055 skilled immigrant visas granted in 2010. The problem, immigration critics say, is twofold: (a) longer waits as the government slowly sifts through the old backlog of applications that still runs in the hundreds of thousands, and (b) a glut of applications to the 38 specific job categories introduced in 2008.

“We have a growing inventory because we have an oversupply of eager candidates,” said Richard Kurland, a Vancouver-based immigrant lawyer and policy analyst who obtained the data. “The processing time is going to balloon. This is an early warning of a backlog returning.”

To reduce the volume of applications, Kurland said Ottawa needs to trim the occupation list and install a warning system that alerts officials to remove a job category when it generates too many applications. “It may be unpopular politically, but the immigration minister needs to fix this,” Kurland said. CIC just announced this month plans to review labour market needs to update the occupation list.

CIC spokesperson Kelli Fraser acknowledged this week that between March 2008 and now, the department has received 327,843 skilled immigrant applications for the 38 occupations, everything from geologists and specialist physicians to chefs and plumbers. But she said 80% of decisions have been made within seven months or less.

Visa offices facing high workloads include Damascus in Syria, Guatemala, Port of Spain in Trinidad and Tobago, and Kingston, Jamaica. The old backlog has been reduced by 40 per cent from 640,000 to roughly 400,000 applicants, she said. Under the old rules, a skilled immigrant application took four to five years to process; “given the size of the backlog, it cannot be reduced overnight,” said Fraser.

The full article appears here.