Keeping tabs

Mr. O's temporary work app arrived in Vegreville, AB - home of the world's largest Ukrainian Easter Egg - yesterday. The current estimated wait time on the CIC site for apps received on or before Dec 11 is 44 days, so really that means we don't know how long ours might take. (If you're in a betting mood, leave a comment.)

Speaking of wait times, I talked to a CIC agent this morning about the wait times on the PR application. Mr. O had emailed me earlier, mildly freaking about the prospect of having to wait another 12 months for his visa - thanks to a note we'd failed to, er, notice on the processing times page, which reads:

There is a two-step process involved in family class applications: the assessment of the sponsorship application in Canada and the assessment of the permanent residence application outside Canada by the visa office. There are separate processing times for each of these two steps.

Processing an out-of-country sponsorship application (i.e. the first step) takes 37 days at CPC Mississauga. In-country, the same app takes five to six months. When that application goes through, Mr. O will get a letter stating his AIP, which means he can apply for an open work permit. But then step 2 begins, and the current wait times on that are anywhere from three to nine months. "I like to tell people 18 months start to finish," says the nice CIC guy.

When I asked him why it took so much longer to process a sponsorship app in Canada than from outside, he told me that the RCMP and CSIS checks (two of the three checks done on each file, Immigration being the third) are both backlogged at the moment because Canadian employers have also started conducting private checks through the RCMP. He also said that the medical is entered into the system about three months after it's done, and that this time of year is also the peak period for applications, all of which create delays.

It makes me think it would be so much easier if CIC agents could do their own checks, rather than relying on the RCMP (in which, sorry, I have little confidence in general) and CSIS. Then again, this could all be part of a big political passing of the buck. We really have no way of knowing.

The good news is that this doesn't change our situation in any practical way. Once he has the AIP he can work (or not work) as he likes, and that date hasn't moved any. The rest of it is, at this point, too far into the future to be worth worrying about at this point.