How much time does it take after receiving acknowledgment letter ?

[OZZI]

Hi there,
I have recently received my acknowledgment letter but after talking to a few people and reviewing some of the feedback on the site
everyone seems to have a different idea regarding the matter, some people i talked to said it moves quickly now days and you become a citizen within 10 month from the time u receive your acknowledgment letter but on the other hand some claim it took them over 2 and a half years to get a date for a citizenship test alone ???
could someone please shed more light on this matter ?

[Leon]

It was me who took almost 2 and a half years.

My timeline so far:

February 18 2006 - application sent in
March 1 2006 - Date of AOR
June 10 2008 - Date of notice to appear for citizenship test, arrived June 12 by mail
June 25 2008 - Citizenship test
July 24 2008 - Date of notice to appear for ceremony, arrived July 28 by mail
August 14 2008 - Scheduled date of ceremony

So, looks like I will be done in just under 2 yrs. and 5 months.  According to immigration, the average processing time for citizenship is supposed to be 13.3 months.  Why some cases take longer, nobody knows.  It's supposed to be getting faster now too so I think I may ask some ppl when I have the ceremony when they applied for it.  Maybe they just dropped my application behind a filing cabinet and only found it a year later at spring cleaning :)

[OZZI]

Well Congrats on receiving your oath ceremony date and do let me know what the people out there had to say regarding the time frame with the citizenship process

[Leon]

Not like I talked to everybody there or anything but from those I talked to, it seemed more common that their process time for the whole thing was close to a year so immigration saying the average is 13 months could well be true.

Ceremony by the way took pretty much forever.  Time to show up was 11 am.  At 11:10 or so, they started a line of checking papers, stamping IMM100 forms, taking away PR cards etc.  This was finally done for everybody at 12:10.  They provided sandwiches and cut up fruit.  Told us to wait there.  At 1 pm, they had us sit down in front of the stage to talk for about 10 minutes and then told us to get back up and do a round table discussion.  They assigned a few immigrants to each table along with 2-3 teachers who were doing some kind of social studies program and we were supposed to talk about why we came and what we hoped and did it work out etc.  That went on for about an hour.  After that we went back to the stage and they called for a volunteer from each table to say a few words about their experience.  After that they called for the bag piper to start playing so all the cool ppl could walk down the stairs and parade around the room before getting up on stage, the citizenship judge and an MP and somebody from the legislature and somebody from immigration and a meti elder and the head of the local citizenship committee and the citizenship judge talked for a while and then we did the oath and then everybody had to go up on stage to pick up their citizenship certificate and then all the ppl on the stage did speeches and I almost fell asleep and finally we sang O Canada and that was it. By then it was 3:40 pm and then they offered a bit more food for those who wanted.

[uchecathy2007]

Leon,
Big Congrats!!!!!!
God bless

[jalbert]

It was me who took almost 2 and a half years.

My timeline so far:

February 18 2006 - application sent in
March 1 2006 - Date of AOR
June 10 2008 - Date of notice to appear for citizenship test, arrived June 12 by mail
June 25 2008 - Citizenship test
July 24 2008 - Date of notice to appear for ceremony, arrived July 28 by mail
August 14 2008 - Scheduled date of ceremony

So, looks like I will be done in just under 2 yrs. and 5 months.  According to immigration, the average processing time for citizenship is supposed to be 13.3 months.  Why some cases take longer, nobody knows.  It's supposed to be getting faster now too so I think I may ask some ppl when I have the ceremony when they applied for it.  Maybe they just dropped my application behind a filing cabinet and only found it a year later at spring cleaning :)

For how long had you been a permanent resident before that? Would you mind telling me where you immigrated from?

[Leon]

Where you come from and how long you are PR is not supposed to matter as long as you qualify (PR living in Canada for 3 years or more).  At my oath ceremony there were 78 people from 40 different countries, Kenya, Peru, Iran, Portugal, S-Africa etc. etc.  Some had applied for citizenship as soon as they could and some had waited.  One guy was already in Canada 28 years.  I had applied after I was PR for about 4 years.

[jalbert]

Where you come from and how long you are PR is not supposed to matter as long as you qualify (PR living in Canada for 3 years or more).  At my oath ceremony there were 78 people from 40 different countries, Kenya, Peru, Iran, Portugal, S-Africa etc. etc.  Some had applied for citizenship as soon as they could and some had waited.  One guy was already in Canada 28 years.  I had applied after I was PR for about 4 years.

I know it doesn't matter. I was just curious.