Anyone want to join a thread for people applying in the near future?

[agarand8]

Fedexed our outland app to Mississauga today!! ;D
I see the processing time for step 1 increased from 28 days last month to currently 44 days.
Does anyone know if those are calendar days or business days?

Those are calendar days, and most of us are finding that it's taking even longer than that. I waited 51 days for my AOR that I received today. That processing time is supposed to be for the Sponsorship Approval, but I don't have that yet and already counting 51 days. So don't get stressed out if it starts taking a little longer than the posted times.

 

[hcseeker]

Those are calendar days, and most of us are finding that it's taking even longer than that. I waited 51 days for my AOR that I received today. That processing time is supposed to be for the Sponsorship Approval, but I don't have that yet and already counting 51 days. So don't get stressed out if it starts taking a little longer than the posted times.

Yikes agarand8!!! You stressed me out by saying it'll be 51 days or more. I'm borrowing to move and my wife has a large student loan we have to start paying on. Thanks for the info though.

Glad you at least got your AOR. Do you know if there is a list anywhere of all the different abbreviations used in this forum?

 

[agarand8]

lol uhm no I dont but let me try to help....

AOR - Acknowledgment of Receipt
SA - Sponsorship Approval
AOR2 - Acknowledgement of Receipt from your VO - Visa Office
PPR - Passport Request
PCC - Criminal Record Check or Police Certificate
ECAS - this is the name of the online system that CIC - Immigration Canada Uses, you can log into it about a week after you receive your AOR because you need the UCI - Universal Client Identification Number in order to sign in.

That's all I can think of. Let me know if someone is using another one that you can't figure out.

 

[rhcohen2014]

in the general- all canadian immigration forum (last forum under immigration topics), there is a thread pinned to the top with a list of all the acronyms.

 

[lleahdoll]

http://www.canadavisa.com/canada-immigration-discussion-board/immigration-acronyms-t3007.0.html
^^^^^ what rhcohen mentioned.

Thanks lleahdoll. When I mailed the FBI report request, their website said it would take 22 days for them to process it. It actually only took 22 days total for it to be received, processed and sent back. Hopefully you'll get the same result or quicker.

Ooh! Good to know! I hope so as well!! We sent it beginning of May.. can't remember the exact date off the top of my head but it was before May 8th at least.

 

[hcseeker]

in the general- all canadian immigration forum (last forum under immigration topics), there is a thread pinned to the top with a list of all the acronyms.

Thanks a bunch rhcohen for the info. Thanks to lleahdoll for the link. Strangely enough, I did a search on the entire forum for "acronym" a while ago and got 2 hits in conversational threads that didn't tell me much of anything.

 

[hcseeker]

lol uhm no I dont but let me try to help....

AOR - Acknowledgment of Receipt
SA - Sponsorship Approval
AOR2 - Acknowledgement of Receipt from your VO - Visa Office
PPR - Passport Request
PCC - Criminal Record Check or Police Certificate
ECAS - this is the name of the online system that CIC - Immigration Canada Uses, you can log into it about a week after you receive your AOR because you need the UCI - Universal Client Identification Number in order to sign in.

That's all I can think of. Let me know if someone is using another one that you can't figure out.

Thanks for the reply. About PPR: do you actually have to send your passport into CIC at some point? Both sponsor & applicant? If that's the case, how on earth could you travel if you needed to?

My wife and I considered moving to Costa Rica from the US. I read on some forums there's a lot of theft there and health costs have risen drastically in the last few years so we decided: back to Canada.

 

[lleahdoll]

Thanks a bunch rhcohen for the info. Thanks to lleahdoll for the link. Strangely enough, I did a search on the entire forum for "acronym" a while ago and got 2 hits in conversational threads that didn't tell me much of anything.

Thanks for the reply. About PPR: do you actually have to send your passport into CIC at some point? Both sponsor & applicant? If that's the case, how on earth could you travel if you needed to?

My wife and I considered moving to Costa Rica from the US. I read on some forums there's a lot of theft there and health costs have risen drastically in the last few years so we decided: back to Canada.

You are welcome

If you are indeed from the US, you won't need to send in your actual passport. They will request copies of all the pages though. I think you either email them or mail them.

 

[hcseeker]

You are welcome

If you are indeed from the US, you won't need to send in your actual passport. They will request copies of all the pages though. I think you either email them or mail them.

Actually I'm a Cdn citizen & my wife is a US citizen. Good to know about the passport request. Thanks again. This immigration journey is a crazy one with all kinds of unexpected twists & turns, an adventure. lol It reminds me of 1 person's definition of adventure: troubles that don't kill you!
Good to have the moral support and knowledge of people like you and other on this forum. ;D

 

[Elena78]

I am a newbie here.
I am in the process of completing the application.
I just got married May 17/14.
I have lots of questions and this forum thread will definately help.

 

[lleahdoll]

Actually I'm a Cdn citizen & my wife is a US citizen. Good to know about the passport request. Thanks again. This immigration journey is a crazy one with all kinds of unexpected twists & turns, an adventure. lol It reminds me of 1 person's definition of adventure: troubles that don't kill you!
Good to have the moral support and knowledge of people like you and other on this forum. ;D

Depends on the applicant's citizenship. Are you the sponsor or the applicant?
hahaha yes, it's definitely an adventure!!

I am a newbie here.
I am in the process of completing the application.
I just got married May 17/14.
I have lots of questions and this forum thread will definately help.

Welcome and congrats on the marriage!!
If you have any questions, feel free to ask here! Myself or some other frequents of this thread would be glad to answer!!
Always makes sure to try and research yourself first. I wasn't active on this thread for like a year. I made sure to do lots of reading on the forum and CIC's website.

 

[jjoon]

http://www.canadavisa.com/canada-immigration-discussion-board/immigration-acronyms-t3007.0.html
^^^^^ what rhcohen mentioned.
Ooh! Good to know! I hope so as well!! We sent it beginning of May.. can't remember the exact date off the top of my head but it was before May 8th at least.

FWIW, my FBI report, just last month, met their (28 business day) posted time as well. Mailed out march 24, credit card charged April 23, received April 30 (exact dates estimated)

PS - was going to share the acronym post location from another rhcohen post but she beat me to it! she's on fiahhhh! ;D

 

[agarand8]

Actually I'm a Cdn citizen & my wife is a US citizen. Good to know about the passport request. Thanks again. This immigration journey is a crazy one with all kinds of unexpected twists & turns, an adventure. lol It reminds me of 1 person's definition of adventure: troubles that don't kill you!
Good to have the moral support and knowledge of people like you and other on this forum. ;D

As the Canadian you won't have to send them anything. And anyways they don't keep the passport they just print the landing visa inside of it and send it back to you. You usually have it back within a couple of weeks.

Costa Rica is an amazing place, but I couldn't live there. I tried but there's nothing for decent jobs unless you want to live in the big city instead of near the beach. You can make money if you're good at running a business though. Hotel, restaurant, something like that. Private healthcare is expensive but public health care isn't, I don't know the process involved for a foreigner to get public health care though, you'd have to talk to a lawyer. Theft has never been a problem for me, if you always have your common sense about you it won't be an issue.

If I won the lottery or something crazy and had a bunch of money to start up a hotel of sorts, we would probably go back there to live. But since there's no money, I'm bringing him here.

 

[jjoon]

Those are calendar days, and most of us are finding that it's taking even longer than that. I waited 51 days for my AOR that I received today. That processing time is supposed to be for the Sponsorship Approval, but I don't have that yet and already counting 51 days. So don't get stressed out if it starts taking a little longer than the posted times.

was hoping to hear that most people's experience was LESS than the posted processing time... :'(

any ideas/theories/wild guesses why this is happening? is something being shunted to mississauga/ottawa that wasn't before?

their processing times were approximated human timelines... but now... hoping this is not start of a trend.

 

[rhcohen2014]

was hoping to hear that most people's experience was LESS than the posted processing time... :'(

any ideas/theories/wild guesses why this is happening? is something being shunted to mississauga/ottawa that wasn't before?

their processing times were approximated human timelines... but now... hoping this is not start of a trend.

march applicants saw a significant backlog. there were 3 reasons identified so far (without having the inside scoop at CIC):

1. the computer system got hit with some sort of bug that knocked it out for i think almost a week
2. there was a 4 day weekend for easter, so 2 weeks in april were short work weeks
3. just looking at the spreadsheets from this forum, march had a larger number of applicants than previous months (almost double february), and that's not including the applicants who don't post to this forum or share their submission date.

it seems that CIC is still catching up with all of that, so the processing time has increased dramatically. hopefully it will all even out soon enough so it will go back down again. i'm guessing there are also times of the year that sees an increase of applications.


i think it's important to note that just because the website says they are working on a specific day for applications, this doesn't necessarily mean all applications before that date are complete. there may be certain delays in their background checks for sponsors that delays certain applications. there may also be some strange rule about pulling applications we have no clue about.

we also don't know what the working day is like for these officers. perhaps there's a schedule for when to look at applications, or there has been an increase in meetings or whatnot that took people away from their desks. remember these are government workers. since my husband is a unionized city worker, i can say that government workers tend to not go over and beyond what they need to do each day. in fact, if they are unionized, chances are they are not going to be in any rush to do more work than they are contracted to. (and i say that lovingly because that's how my hubby is!)

Again, we will never know for sure because CIC doesn't tell us their secrets...