Italian Spouse Sponsorship

[Italian Stallion]

Hi everybody,
I'm Italian and next September I will get married my Canadian fiancee  . After this I want to start the application for the PR. Do you know how long all the process takes?

[CanuckyInItaly]

Good luck with the Rome Immigration Office... It's one of the slowest in Europe.

Our application was sent to CPC-M on October 29th, 2010.
Received sponsor approval on November 25th.
Documents were forwarded to Rome on December 6th.
AOR received on February 8th.
No more updates. We're still waiting...
The application is not even in process yet.

Where are you from, btw?

[Italian Stallion]

OMG  are you still waiting?
I wish you find a solution very  soon.
I'm Italian from Rome and she is Canadian from London On.
Where do you come from?

Sorry what is the AOL?

[CanuckyInItaly]

Yes still waiting... and there's nothing we can do about it.

Some days ago we wrote an email asking what was going on with our application.
This is their reply:
"Your application is in queue for review. An exact review schedule is not yet available.
However, all applications are reviewed in the order in which they were received.
No further action is required by you at this time.
We thank you for your patience and for keeping your correspondence to a minimum."

So basically we learned nothing new! 

The AOR is the letter the Local Visa Office sends you when they receive the documents from CPC Mississauga, ON. There's the approximate time it will take to process all the documents (in our case 7-9 months) and the official file number of the application.

I'm from Ontario as well, but my husband and I live together near Venice. ;-)

Start gathering all the documentsas soon as possible, even if your not married yet. It's going to take a long time!
We started collecting all the papers, letters and pictures in March 2010 and we were ready to ship the complete application by the end of October of the same year.

When are you getting married? In Italy or in Canada?

[Italian Stallion]

hi CanuckyInItaly,
 I don't know what is going on with my profile but i can't find the button to answer to your pvt and when i try to write a new one it tells me that i'm not allowed to send messages.

I have a few questions. Here is my email adress so we can talk, if it's not a problem for you:

lupin32 @ hotmail.com

Thanks in advance. 

[CanuckyInItaly]

I wrote you a pm.

[Italian Stallion]

I hope that someone will be intersted to share their own experience with me... i really need help!!!

 

[prettyinpink]

Hi CanuckyInItaly!

I'm new to this site and tried to send you a pm but I'm not allowed to. I noticed you are going doing a outbound spousal sponsorship thru the Rome office. I'm in a similar boat and actually our dates for each step are off by about 1 week. My ecas has said 'In Process' for the longest time! I'm hoping that this month will bring good fortune and they'll finally make a decision!

I think we are close to the finish line!!!!

[CanuckyInItaly]

Hi Prettyinpink!
It's nice to finally find someone else to share almost the same timeline with! :-)
I'm glad to hear you're already in process. How long ago did you get your update?
We're not in process yet. eCas is still showing the "Application Received" status. Sigh!
How's the waiting going for you and your partner?
We're tired of living our lives on hold...

Keep me posted!
Take care,

Barbara

[abbuffon]

Great finally someone else going though Rome... 
and "in process" too! 

It's so difficult to find people going through Rome on this forum that it becomes impossible to get an idea on processing times...

By the way...  @  prettyinpink , how did you get your AOR before the file was transferred to Rome? Are you sure about the dates you put on your profile?

[prettyinpink]

We've gotten 2 letters so far. One stating i was approved as the sponsor (about a month after we sent it to Mississauga) and the other to my husband stating that his file has been shipped to Rome and that they will be processing it and that for family sponsorship it takes about 5-7 months. Isn't that the AOR? Why is the timeline on the letter different that the website which states 13months? 

My eCAS shows the dates that they received the application and the date they made their decision on. His eCAS shows that 'We started processing your application on December 1, 2010. ' I didn't check eCAS until about January so I'm not sure exactly when this message first appeared. To date, the status has not changed though....

Has anyone sent the Rome office a case specific enquiry thru the site? Are you supposed to get an auto-email reply from them that they received it?

Abbuffon - I'm assuming you're in process as well? 

Barbara - yes...waiting is VERY annoying....i feel like our lives are on hold and we can't move forward just yet.....hoping to hear some good news soon!!!!

[prettyinpink]

ps. Barbara - did you get my email that I sent yesterday?

[abbuffon]

No, I'm not in process yet... My ecas just states "Application Received".
I don't want to be negative but I believe they just made a mistake when they wrote on prettyinpink's ecas that they're processing the application, since timelines don't match: it seems very unlikely they started processing the application as soon as they received it. My experience is that they put the applications in queue on arrival order and when they start processing them it only takes few days (weeks?) to finalize and get a "decision made". I think Rome is building up delays since prettyinpink's AOR (in December) states 5-7 mo., CanuckyInItaly's (received in February) states 7-9 mo. and mine (received in May) says 8-12 mo....

I think the 13 mo. on the site is an average that takes in account applications from Albania and Greece (it seems to take always more than a year for them, I checked on trackitt.com), for Italians should be faster. When I did my medicals in Rome last december the doctor told me that the Immigration Supervisor told her they were expecting troubles in 2011 since they were switching to a new IT system (new PCs and probably new Software...), I didn't take that too seriously but I guess it is happening.

One weird thing: they sent the AOR to prettyinpink as soon as they received the application (as it should be), for CanuckyInItaly an myself we had to write an email asking info and they sent the AOR only after that (months later)...

We can just keep our fingers crossed and hope we hear something new soon (for anyone of us, just to know something is moving, PM anytime ). In the meantime I don't know when to put my house for sale, tell my boss my last month of work here, start shipping... kind of difficult without a precise date for the visa.

[prettyinpink]

Hey Abbuffon,

I fixed my dates in my profile to reflect the correct timelines.....

I don't believe the ecas system is 100% accurate or updated regularly so most likely there are errors.

I'm not sure if there is some sort of filtering which occurs when the Rome office receives the application either. My husband is from Greece so that may also be another reason why my experiences and timeslines may be different.....

I also checked trackitt.com but I'm not putting too much emphasis on 2 Greek cases given that I know of another couple(similar boat as me) that submitted their papers end of Jan 2010 to the Mississauga office and then had them forwarded to Rome. The passport request occured in late October. Based on these time lines it took Rome VO about 7-8 mths to process. I'm benchmarking my experience against this one....

On another note, did you email them thru the website? If so, did you get an auto-reply from them saying your email has been received? I know that some VO do that and was wondering if Rome does it as well.

I hear you about having to wait and not knowing when you should start taking the steps to actually move on...it's hard.....

Are you checking ecas using the immigration number only? Or do you also check using your spouse's client id? I wonder if an update occurs if it happens the same time?

One last question......have you heard of the Rome office emailing vs. sending a mail? What is their preference? To date, like i said, we have only gotten 1 mailed item...the AOR.....

Will keep updating everyone if anythings changes!!!!

Stay hopefull!!!

[Italian Stallion]

Hi guys,

thank you to share your experience with me in this post. I think that we are all italians or married with an italian, applying for a PR with the lazy Canadian Embassy of Rome.
I must be true, I'm just beginning to collect things and get all the information (the reason for this forum) because I'm getting married next September 1 in Ontario, and will begin this hellish torture. 
I'm scared about this because i'm ignorante about all the things to do, and reading your post i'm looking that it is not easy. 

I hope that we can help eachother here. 

thank you guys.... GOD BLESS YOU!!!

P.S. A special THANKS to "CanuckyInItaly"... she was so nice with me.... I'll send you a message asap!

GaB