Hello! I'm wondering if the location of the visa office has any impact on the processing of my application.
Security check and eligibility are in progress and my application is at CIO - Sydney.
Would appreciate the insight of
@legalfalcon and experts
There has been an obsession of finding which visa office the application is at. Many threads on this forum start with explaining how to find your visa office. Let's get to the crux of it. Finding the visa office was very relevant pre- express entry. Even after the introduction of express entry in 2015, the same practice was followed which usually was for the paper based application, but that is no longer the case. Earlier all application followed the following trajectory:
Central Intake Office - Case Processing Centre - Local Visa Office
However, this has radically changed and for all express entry, all application follow the following:
1.
Central Intake Office - The R10 (completeness check) is done at the Central Intake Office for all classes (FSW / PNP / CEC). Now even the criminality and medicals are done at CIO.
2.
Case Processing Centre - These are 4 CPCs in Canada
CPC in Edmonton
CPC in Mississauga
CPC and CIO in Sydney
CPC in Ottawa
OSC in Ottawa
The Operations Support Centre (OSC) processes the following applications:
International Experience Canada work permits
In-Canada temporary resident applications submitted online
Verification of Status (VOS)
Replacement of valid temporary resident documents
Amendment of immigration documents and of valid temporary resident documents
Local Visa Office also the primary office - This is the office where you will be asked to submit your passport after your application has been approved. Usually the consulate in your home country.
These days all application after starting at CIO (where R10 is met), either start the processing of eligibility at CIO itself, or move to CPC (wither Ottawa, Sydney, or Vegreville), or are straight sent to the LVO. The trend has been to complete most of the processing between CIO and CPC. Since the applications are electronically stored, there is no movement of physical files, but files are assigned based on workload and office processing specialization.