In Canada spouse visa latest news, Do Canadian spousal sponsorship applications take too long to process? According to Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, it could take up to 12 months under normal circumstances to sponsor a spouse. In certain instances, this is seen to be too long to wait to be reunited with a partner.
Ottawa has been speeding up the processing of spousal sponsorship applications at the close of last year – but advocates argue a lot more needs to be achieved.
Misha Pelletier, a spokesperson for Spousal Sponsorship Advocates, says that many applicants under the Spousal Sponsorship Program for Permanent Resident status in Canada still see a delay of as much as 34 months. Not everyone agrees that the processing times are so long.
According to the Toronto Star article, the standard processing time for overseas applications is 17 months and 15 months for in-Canada applications, up from 12 months before the pandemic.
Everyone agrees, however, that Canada should make it easier and clear the backlog of spousal sponsorship applications.
At the end of September last year, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Minister Marco Mendicino launched a proposal to speed up spousal applications and help families build their lives together in Canada.
Ottawa raised the number of people making decisions on these spousal applications by 66 per cent in the last quarter of 2020.
The Canadian Immigration Department has used innovative technologies as part of a pilot project to digitize paper applications so that they could be handled more efficiently by IRCC staff working remotely and at different workplaces.
The Government also promised to pursue another pilot project to use technology to perform remote interviews with candidates in accordance with public health protocols.
These measures were intended to enable the Government to send approximately 6,000 spousal applications per month from October to the close of December. The goal amounted to 49,000 spousal applications by the close of 2020.
| Submissions Processed between Oct. 1 through to Dec. 31, 2020 (in persons) | ||||
| Result Month | Accepted | Rejected | Withdrawn | Grand Total |
| October 2020 | 4,945 | 246 | 131 | 5,322 |
| November 2020 | 5,436 | 313 | 106 | 5,855 |
| December 2020 | 4,435 | 278 | 109 | 4,822 |
| Grand Total | 14,816 | 837 | 346 | 15,999 |
Ottawa fell short of that target, processing 15,999 applications in the last three months of 2020 and approving just 14,816 applications. The number of applications rejected was 837, and 346 were removed.
Pelletier says this isn’t good enough. In an interview, she gave only 50 per cent to the Canadian Immigration Department, which she described as a failing grade.
More details in Canada spouse visa latest news, During the COVID-19 pandemic, it is estimated that the Government could take no longer than 15 months to process spousal sponsorship applications, and she would like to see the improvement time cut to six to nine months, once the pandemic is over.
In an interview with TVO, Mendicino said that his vision is that the Canadian immigration system should be “completely virtual and untouchable and that each and every one of these steps should be integrated so that we can become the envy of the world.”
Canada has also shifted on-line citizenship ceremonies and some of its other procedures.