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robertbola

Hero Member
Mar 29, 2009
234
1
Hi everyone,

This might seem like a stupid or hard question to ask, however does anyone know how the process works in immigration in order for them to approve/deny people's applications.

Thank you
 
I'm assuming you mean for spouses/common-law applicants?

I don't know the details and there's no exact science to it, but basically, they have to check that:

- the sponsor qualifies to sponsor the applicant (mostly done in Mississauga, but the visa office also checks this, especially in the case when the sponsor is living abroad at the time of the application)
- the applicant qualifies as a member of the family class (check that the marriage is legal, the common-law union exists, the sponsor had not excluded this person from being sponsored - like for example if the sponsor landed in Canada without declaring a spouse back home, ...)
- the relationship between the sponsor and applicant is genuine
- there are no security reasons why the applicant should not be admitted into Canada (this includes previous convictions)
- the applicant passed the medical exam and is not a threat to public health

I might've missed something, but I think that's the gist of it. And it goes roughly in that order.
 
Its nice to know some people get approved in like two, three weeks when it gets to the visa office.

I would like to be part of that statistic :-)
 
I guess, it depends on visa office load.

Good luck to us all! :)
 
No one gets approved in two or three weeks. The sponsorship approval piece alone takes longer than that! But I do know what you mean. After the file gets sent to the appropriate embassy and then it all happens for some so quickly. I've never seen one in the last year that was less than a month after AOR but I have seen a couple that were less than 2 months. Wish I was one of those too!
 
Well, he DID say 2 or 3 weeks AFTER it gets to the visa office ;)

robertbola said:
Its nice to know some people get approved in like two, three weeks when it gets to the visa office.

I would like to be part of that statistic :-)

Mine got done pretty fast. From the day we sent our application to the day I had the visa in hand, it was exactly 3 months. The Mississauga approval took only 2 weeks. Almost a month later, the visa office started processing and another month after that, the PPR arrived. Even that relatively short wait felt like ages though, so I admire anyone who manages to survive a much longer processes.

I think a lot depends on the backlog of the visa office and how fast they can get information from others. I suspect the IO doesn't actually have a lot of work with one application, but if they need to check anything with anyone outside the office, it takes a while to get the data back. And of course, there's also the background check which sometimes takes absurdly long.
 
For those of us who have been waiting 10 months so far, it has really been tough. I have finally heard from Bogota probably another 2-4 months. So when people get ansy after a month or two,but then I do occasionally read of people waiting 17 months, so, I hope we are on the down hill slide with just a few more months. I really hoped my wife could get here before it starts to get too cold, but what the heck,she will experience a cold winter sooner or later . It is amasing the differnt time frames from various visa offices, but I am sure they all ther own unique problems