I left the following in the comments section on the immigration site on Facebook under the live link:
I really appreciate the improvements to the process and the ongoing commitment to family reunification. Having been in this process in the past and again now, I recognize the progress being made and the work being done to simplify the process. I recognize too that the backlog was inherited from the previous government and the current government is working hard to reduce it, which is a huge undertaking.
With that being said, I think that the metrics by which the government is measuring success is a little misleading, or may not be telling the whole story.
The goal is to process 80% of applications within a 12 month period. Is this per visa office or overall? If it overall, then it allows for some offices to be less accountable than others. If some offices consistently process faster than 12 months, then that balances those offices that are not able to process within this time frame. So between that, and the 20% that don’t have to be processed within the timeframe, some offices can still be a lot slower than the 12 month time frame.
Also, for those of us that enter the process, we believe our processing time starts the minute we post our application. But for the government’s statistics, and in determining success in meeting the 12 month processing time goal, time starts once a complete and accurate package has been received. These two times can differ significantly as applications may be incomplete and returned to the applicant, sometimes on numerous occasions. And unfortunately they are often incomplete not due to issues with the applicants themselves, but because of the actual process.
And while 12 months is a huge improvement over the processing times in the past for some offices, a true commitment to family reunification would see this timeframe being consistently shortened. For those of us in the system currently, even a few days away from our spouses can seem like a lifetime. We should be striving for continuous improvement, so the 12 month processing time should continuously be reduced.
While the current government has much reason to celebrate the improvements, today’s announcements didn’t do much for those of us that have been in the process for a long time, have heard nothing from the visa offices for months, and can’t even see updates in our online accounts.