Did you know that the speed at which IRCC processes your application depends on which immigration program you choose?
Just imagine in 2024, IRCC will have decided on over 7 million inquiries across all of their business lines!
IRCC recently released a strategy to help you better understand how applications are processed. IRCC’s goal is to process 80% of applications within their service standards. This allows them to anticipate delays in some complex cases or when they need more information from clients before finalizing their review of files.
However, if there are more people applying than there are slots available, this goal becomes impossible to achieve, and processing times may increase in some categories of applications. This creates a backlog, or accumulation of applications that have not been processed due to circumstances.
And if we study the percentage of unconsidered applications for permanent statuses – PR (Express Entry, Provincial Nomination, Sponsorship) and the percentage of unconsidered applications for temporary statuses (Temporary Residence Visa – TRV, Study Permit, Work Permit), we will come to some rather interesting conclusions.
Let’s take January 2025 data as an example:
- For Sponsored Program applications, the backlog was 15%
- For Express Entry applications, the backlog was 20%
- For Provincial Nominations, the backlog was 30%
But we see a completely different picture for temporary statuses:
- For applications for Temporary Resident Visas (TRVs), the backlog was 71%
- For applications for study permits, the backlog was 45%
- For applications for work permits, the backlog was 42%
