Newbie2014 said:
Actually, I don't even think it would qualify as "CIC mischief" in this case. This is the way the CIC has always operated. And a recent law clarified it as standard operating procedure. I can't remember the details of that law, though....
As you can see, the time threshold is the date the application was "received". Does this mean the point in time when the letter reaches the CIC? As all who have already applied know, this is not the case. The application is "received" a few weeks afterwards, after the CIC has had a chance to review the application, and determined that it is complete. It takes about three weeks or so, if I recall correctly. Which is why I think that anything received between now and the end of June will be "received" in July.
There are two "received" dates. One is the date of physical receipt of mail at CIC. Let's call this the R1 date. The first page of your application forms will be date-stamped with either this date or the next day's date at the latest. The other "received" date (call it R2 for this discussion) is the date CIC creates an electronic file of your application in their database system and sends out an "Acknowledgement of Receipt" (AOR) to the applicant. The AOR notice will state that CIC "received" your application on the R2 date because that is the date that an official record of your application was created in their system. Before that date, nobody would have been able to locate any application under your name in the CIC computers.
I believe the "received" date for purposes of application of law is the R1 date, not the R2. This is because there will be a stamp with the R1 date on your application AND because CIC will cash (or process) any enclosed payment shortly after the R1 date (within two or three days of R1 so obviously weeks or months earlier than the R2 date).
I know from my own experience that there exist R1 and R2 dates as I've described, and that there exists a date-stamp with the R1 date on your application. When I applied for permanent residence, CIC in Buffalo returned the application to me because it needed an extra document. I first mailed it on October 1st, 2010 and it was returned to me on December 23rd, 2010 with a notice to re-submit with document X. I was given 60 days to re-submit, with the explicit warning that if I did not resubmit in 60 days, they would delete their record of this "Resubmit Request" and I would have to re-apply all over again. (Since the list of occupations had changed recently, I was no longer eligible to re-apply so by returning it to me CIC was hoping that somehow I would fail to re-submit within 60 days and so they could wash their hands of me for good. Nice try!)
Long story short, when I received the returned application I noticed they had date stamped it with October 6th, two days after physical receipt of application on October 4th. And they had charged my credit card on this same date, even though they took an extra two and half months just to look at my application and decide that it needs extra document X.
This is what usually happens. CIC will date stamp with R1 date and take your money on or about this date, but then for the next 2-3 months your application sits in the opened envelope in a queue awaiting the entry of your data in their system (and thus the creation of an official record on R2 date). If you call them before the R2 date they won't have any information on your application because they haven't created it in the system. They don't go around rummaging though stacks of opened packages just because you want to know for sure if they've physically received it.
Since CIC has date-stamped and taken your money on the R1 date, I doubt it can claim in Federal Court that the R2 date applies as a cut-off for any new law applicability. It seems to me that would not hold water. The judges will say "then you shouldn't have processed the applicant's payment three months before the "received" date that you're claiming." It'll smell of hypocrisy.
