Confusing ECAS status?

[xanides]

My wife's ECAS status shows "In progress", but when we click on that it says:

We received your application for permanent residence on July 7, 2011.

We started processing your application on July 15, 2011.

A decision has been made and you will be contacted.

What does this mean? We were thinking we'd be getting a letter from them, but that status has been like that for 3+ weeks now and no letter.


Timeline:
Visa office: Vegreville
Sent: 03-07-2011
Client #: 29-05-2012
Medical: ??-12-2010 (in USA)

 

[Jamgirl]

It means that you may be receiving your approval letter... keep an eye on your post office mail box as well as your junk mail folder in your email....

 

[lovely20]

Did you applied inland or outland? If it is inland, you might have been approved for first stage. Did you send an application for an open work permit when you send in your sponsorship papers?

 

[xanides]

We applied inland (the medical was done outland (USA) as we had initially intended to apply from there).

I believe we were already approved for first stage (May 2012, ~11mo after application). We received a pair of letters, mine (sponsor) stating I was approved as a sponsor, hers (sponsored spouse) stating she can apply for OWP and requesting a police certificate from Germany (where she lived for a short while 7 years ago, we sent this Jul 2012). We did not apply for an OWP. Should we? My wife is a stay-at-home mom so she's not considering employment soon anyway. Is there any sort of benefit to getting her an OWP in terms of speeding things up / improving her approval chances?

She has an extension of visitor status (we applied for that at the same time as PR application, Jul 2011) good until Nov 2012. We're about to file for an extension for that. Would an OWP affect that in any way?

Edit: I understand one of the later steps is the application being forwarded to a local office. Last thing received from them was from Vegreville, AB in May 2012. We live in SW Ontario (Kitchener area). Does this mean we can't expect any decision to be made until sometime after we receive a letter that the application was sent to Kitchener?

 

[Jamgirl]

ahhh inland, then yes, may be sponsorship approval...

 

[lovely20]

From 2010 applicants what we consider as second stage approval was that line saying decision made followed by the sentence "We sent a letter to this address....."

Since you said you got the first stage approval in May what you can do is call the call center and ask if your wife has been granted PR. If your wife doesn't need to work then there is no point of applying for an OWP as it is an additional 150 CND to do so.

I think that decision made line there was the one for your May 2012 approval. Also the status should have chaged from "in process" to "decision made". Also if you have been approved for second stage, on the average it takes 2 weeks to receive that letter from Vegreville stating that the PR process has been completed and then your local office will send you a letter with your landing date info.