In a major development which may not go down well with the many affected migrants in Canada, the Immigration Minister of the country has reportedly disclosed that his government is intending to do something positive on the immigration backlog, courtesy putting a cap on the number of admissions to be given to the dependent parents and grandparents of the immigrants.

In this connection, Jason Kenney, the minister, was quoted as saying that even though his country continued to remain a very liberal nation across the globe, from the immigration viewpoint, he strongly favored imposing some sort of restrictions. According to officials involved with immigration, currently, over a million immigration applications involving such applicants are still waiting to be looked into.

Kenney’s observations come in the backdrop of a proposal that Ottawa give between 289,000 and 336,000 visas for permanent residency during the next year, in 2012. Swelling the number of parents’ and grandparents’ entries to the nation has also been forwarded.

It needs to be mentioned that every year the country receives nearly 400,000 applications for the purpose of permanent residency. After taking the control of the nation at the centre, the Conservative government has offered permanent residency to nearly 254,000 applicants per annum even while during 2010, close to 38,000 of those applications had come from parents and grandparents of the permanent residents.

The minister added that although there has to be an increased participation in the labor force, immigration certainly is not the key. He added that just about one-fifth of immigrants to the country are primary economic migrants, and the remaining applicants are their partners and sponsored family members. He further said that his government isn’t against family reunification; though it certainly is backing some sort of restrictions on such immigrations.