Number Of New Canadian Citizens In Feb 2014 Almost Doubles, Compared To Last Year

04 Mar 2014

Over 19,200 people have become citizens of Canada from 193 countries in the month of  February at the citizenship ceremonies that are held across Canada. Around 9,980 people were accepted as citizens of Canada for the same period February 2013, which is nearly 100% higher.

Canada has welcomed new citizens at 220 citizenship ceremonies that were held across Canada from school gymnasiums, to city halls and hotel conference rooms, to citizenship and Immigration offices.

This increase in numbers shows that the system has become more efficient,  helps more number of people in realizing their dream of becoming citizens of Canada, and decreases the backlog of citizenship applications. The government’s proposed measures in Strengthening Canadian Citizenship Act, Bill C-24, will reduce the wait time by reorganizing the process of decision making for citizenship. These changes to the Citizenship Act are likely to bring down the average processing time for citizenship applications to less than one year and the existing backlog will come down to 80% by 2015-2016.

Some Quick Facts

• A total of 1,28,936 people were accepted as citizens of Canada in the year 2013, on an average 10,745 every month.
• Until now, in 2014, the government of Canada welcomed 41,000 citizens at the 462 ceremonies that were held across the country.
• Canada has the highest levels of immigration in its history since 2006; it has welcomed 2,57,000 new citizens each year. Hence the demand for citizenship of Canada has improved by 30%.
• With 85% of qualified permanent residents becoming citizens, Canada recorded the highest rate of naturalization in the world. In the year 2013, CIC has received 3,33,860 applications for citizenship, the highest number of applications ever.

The citizenship ceremony marks a formal entry for new Canadians into the family of Canada. It is one of the occasions where the government highlights rights, responsibilities, benefits and privileges of becoming a citizen of Canada.

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