Newfoundland and Labrador has doubled its yearly capacity to accept newcomers to the province.

Immigration Minister Gerry Byrne made the announcement in the House of Assembly yesterday.

The province’s yearly number of immigration spaces from the federal government has increased from 1,500 last year to over 3,000 this year. Along with the families of newcomers, that represents a capacity of 6,700 newcomers nominated annually.

That’s a change that Byrne has been lobbying for since the fall, when government reached their yearly limit over two months ahead of schedule.

That, he says, resulted in the province processing the applications, and then having to wait until the new year to submit them.

Byrne says January saw the largest number of applications forwarded to Ottawa by the province in history.

He says they don’t anticipate that situation happening again now that their capacity has doubled.

While the province’s opposition parties funadmentally have no problem with government bringing in more refugees, they are raising concerns over supports for them once they get here.

PC MHA Joedy Wall, and NDP Leader Jim Dinn points to many of the same issues surrounding things like supports for workers to help get them employed in their fields, and proper educational resources for newcomer students in the system.

Without the proper supports, Wall says new families will leave the province to go elsewhere, and having the proper programs in place is important to keeping people here. Likewise, Dinn says bringing people into the province is the easy part, but then comes the responsibility on government to make sure they can live their best lives.