***APRIL 2020 OUTLAND SPOUSAL SPONSORSHIP***
- Thread starter Yash@2019
- Start date
They didnt say it. I assume as per the spreadsheet thats what they are doing. Im a newbie at this. I apologize if i dont clarify some things. Anyone knows anything else please correct me
It's publicly available from Statistics Canada. But it's mulled with a lot of data so might have to extract it.
https://www.canada.ca/en/immigration-refugees-citizenship/corporate/reports-statistics/statistics-open-data.html
Thank you very much, I'll have to take a look. I have some questions about what exactly the numbers are counting but I'll take a look first.
Great work.
I just saw this today and I'm ecstatic! So grateful!GOOD NEWS
https://www.canada.ca/en/immigration-refugees-citizenship/news/2020/09/ircc-speeding-up-processing-for-spousal-applications.html
News release
September 24, 2020—Ottawa—Today, the Honourable Marco E. L. Mendicino, Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship, is announcing action to speed up spousal application processing and help families build their lives together in Canada.
Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) has increased the number of decision makers on spousal applications in Canada by 66%, to process spousal applications more quickly and reduce couples’ wait times.
IRCC is leveraging new technology in a pilot to digitize paper applications so they can be processed more efficiently by IRCC employees working remotely and at various worksites. In addition to implementing facilitative biometrics measures, IRCC will be piloting, in the upcoming weeks, technology to conduct interviews with applicants remotely, in adherence with public health protocols.
With these initiatives, IRCC aims to accelerate, prioritize and finalize approximately 6,000 spousal applications each month from October until December 2020. Combined with processing to date, this rate will lead to about 49,000 decisions by the end of this year.
COVID-19 has created uncertainty for Canadians who are sponsoring spouses for permanent residence. We will continue to search for innovative and compassionate ways to reunite families, while following the advice of our public health experts to protect the health and safety of Canadians.
This is interesting. I took a look at the number of applications on two different public spreadsheets. If the number of applications on the spreadsheets are an indication of the actual number of applications, there appears to be about a 70% reduction in the number of applicants from April to September. This is secretly giving me hope that the actual backlog might not be as big as initially thought. Of course I could be completely mistaken.
I downloaded that material and haven't yet got to looking in more detail.
BUT: I'm pretty sure that data source shows the number of PRs landed, i.e. that became permanent residents, not applicants, approvals, COPR/visas issued, etc. (This makes sense as this is something StatsCan would pay attention to for things like population / GDP / unemployment etc - whereas applicants or visas issued relevant mainly within the IRCC for management purposes).
So if my interpretation is right, it doesn't tell us much about the backlog at all - we don't know whether the # of applications fell or rose or stayed the same. Even usual estimates of what percentage of COPRs issued end up landing within some period of time from issue could be completely off, given travel restrictions, economic uncertainty, etc.
Of course you could make some guess about whether the number of applications stayed the same and hence backlog, but such estimates would be far more likely to be off right now.
So wearing my skeptical hat: we won't know much about the size of the backlog unless IRCC says something about it. (Journalists I guess could do freedom of information requests)
The data shows number of applications processed - correct. It is then dividing it into quarters by type of immigration application, so I picked up the spousal PRs line specifically. I have the file downloaded if you want the exact I can send it.
However, given they have been processing close to 5000-6000 files a month, wouldn't it be a sensible assumption that applications wouldn't be too far off from that numbers? If there were 12K applications per month we would have a huge backlog - if we had <4K it would be much less.
PS. I tried my best to find number of applicants data but I haven't been able to. If you find any, please do share.
In normal times I think your assumption would be reasonable. There would be some number of refusals, returned, etc - but probably pretty small. And some who get applications approved (COPR) would end up not arriving in Canada in the normal time frame - in normal times, probably not many.
But we honestly don't know if those normal numbers of applications have changed. And since IRCC is now saying that spousal/family COPR holders whose 'expiry date' has passed, there may be more approved who have delayed coming to Canada due to covid.
So unfortunately my point is that the number of approvals given by IRCC (the target announced by minister) may differ from this figure _by more than one would expect based on historical_ - even if we knew that data in the first place.
You can still guess at the backlog but it might be more or less than what one would think compared to historical figures.