As I mentioned, Mr. Opitz, we're now at a backlog in the federal skilled worker program of just a little over 90,000. Given our plan to admit about 55,000 federal skilled workers this year and the fact that a certain number of the applications we process are refused, this means that we're right around a one-year processing inventory for the federal skilled worker program.
You know, some could make an argument that we should not reopen the program for new applications until we're down to less than a 12-month inventory, but as you know, we've made some major policy changes to retool the federal skilled worker points grid. We changed the grid after extensive research, analysis, and consultation. For example, it will place greater emphasis on younger applicants, those with higher levels of language proficiency, and those with Canadian work experience.
But perhaps even more importantly, effective as of the new intake, we have introduced the requirement that applicants for the skilled worker program attach to their applications an evaluation of their education, done by a designated body. This seems modest, but I think it's one of the most important immigration reforms in immigration policy in decades in this country, because finally we will be able to assess whether the education of applicants for economic immigration is at or close to the Canadian standard. We will now know whether the degrees and diplomas of applicants are likely to be accepted by Canadian employers, and indeed perhaps by Canadian professional regulatory bodies, before admitting those applicants. This will dramatically reduce the number of new immigrants who end up facing the survival-job problem.
Because of those policy changes, frankly, we wanted to open the skilled worker program to a limited number of new applications—in this case 5,000 in total—to essentially do a test run of the new selection criteria, including the educational assessment. So I think there was a strong argument to open the door to a limited number of new applications, put them through those new criteria, and see how the educational evaluation is working and what kinds of applicants we're getting based on the new points grid.
Finally, we decided to go with an occupational list—we selected 28 occupations—based on HRSDC data that project the most in-demand occupations in the future, and on consultations with provinces.
Also, Mr. Opitz, I wanted to avoid receiving applications from certain kinds of licensed or regulated professions where immigrants have a really hard time getting their licences, such as physicians. We have a huge surplus of people with medical degrees versus the number of residency positions available for them. There are Canadian medical grads from our medical schools, Canadians who have medical degrees from abroad, and immigrant physicians all vying for a finite number of residency positions. I didn't think, just to take that one example, that it made any sense to increase that surplus of foreign-trained medical grads over the number of scarce residency positions. I thought we could avoid that pain for those people by limiting the number of professional occupations.