Immigration Trends in Canada: What a deeper dive into the numbers tells us about the first half of 2025 –Part1–Permanent Residents and Asylum claims

September 9, 2025

Last October 2024, the Government of Canada announced a reduction to its permanent immigration targets to align with the country’s economic needs from 500,000 down to 395,000 in 2025; from 500,000 to 380,000 in 2026; and setting a target of 365,000 in 2027. With respect to the breakdown by categories, the economic category remained by far the largest proportion of admissions to reach some 62% by 2027. Support for family reunification continues through the family category, which maintains a rate of 22% of overall permanent resident admissions. Canada’s strong and proud tradition of offering protection to those most in need is evident through the sustained targets for Government Assisted Refugees, which contributes to the resettled refugees and protected persons category rate of 15% of overall permanent resident admissions. 21,200 admissions are provided to commitments made on humanitarian and compassionate grounds over three years (https://www.canada.ca/en/immigration-refugees-citizenship/news/notices/supplementary-immigration-levels-2025-2027.html) Meeting these targets is not simple given the need to account for regional priorities, pre existing commitments and other considerations. That which follows will look at the immigrant admission numbers as issued by immigration Refugees and Citizenship Canada for the first two quarters of 2025 (January 1 to June 30th ) and the initial adjustments that were made. On the basis of the IRCC data we will compare with the admission numbers for the same two quarters over the period January 1-June 30th, 2024. There has been much speculation about whether the Government of Canada will reach the targets but much less attention directed at how it will go about doing so and what categories of immigrants will be most affected, what regions of the country will feel the impact and how the numbers in immigrant countries of origin will shift accordingly. As we observe the cuts to immigration levels have thus far have unevenly affected the admission numbers of refugees and protected persons. To that end, we’ve added analysis of the evolving numbers of asylum claimants from the IRCC data with a view to sharing further insights into how accepted refugee levels may shift yet further.