Hi guys,
I have seen the stuffs deliberated on here then I would like to tell u what may help, it is important to have a general understanding of how every thing is "wired and engineered" as far as this especially FSW processing is involved.
If u have not gotten ur PER from the CIC wait for that, although it is the most important so I hope all of u have gotten it. From ur PER, access ur ECAS and look up the date indicated as date of receipt of ur application, that is the lock-in-date. Ur waiting start to count from that date as it is the date u officially go "In-Process"
Now immediately after that, CIC would forward ur application to the corresponding Visa Office, even if Accra has not sent u any AOR, don't worry it is already there and on queue. U would have already been informed from the PER that ur case would be sent to Accra. After about 6-8 weeks, if u still did not receive any AOR, forward an inquiry to the Visa Office, they will reply u and that reply will then count as ur AOR.
Now I wanna state this, from experience, do not send enquiry to the Visa Office if the time gap for whatever u are inquiring about is unreasonable for example, if u received PER just 2 weeks ago and u are already inquiring for ur AOR in Accra, that is too close, they might not reply or take their time to reply.
Another important point, before Jason Kenney left office, he gave an indication that the backlogged applicants would be cleared before clearing 2013 applications. The objective is to clear all backlog and achieve a Just In Time processing hence the reason why there was no Ministerial Instruction for 2012, they used it to buy time to be able to clear pending applications. Now this means it is unlikely that 2013 applicants will be processed until the pending applications are cleared.
So how do u have an idea of how long ur processing will take? Well u may start from looking up the processing times for ur application, though mostly inaccurate, then look at the forum and check the progress of pending applications before urs, the more it progresses the closer u get. For example, if applicants 5, 4, 3 months ahead of me are reporting to have gotten their MR, that means I am also very close considering exceptions of some that may either be a couple of months faster or later than their peers. But what we all use this forum for is to get a rough indication of when ur time could be. Naturally I don't know what u guys get in ur letters from Accra, but they will give u a timeline within which u mustn't contact them for any reason unless u just want to give them an additional information. When I got mine, they asked me not to contact them until after 7 months have passed.
So just try to continue to study the developments and gather information but do not expect so much for now until at least around February-March next year. That is the earliest I think in my honest opinion, that u guys might start receiving some kind of updates because u know why? applications for Ministerial Instruction 2013 are to be processed in 2014.
U might not like that I didn't talk about some miracles that u may get medicals next month but u would observe tha the objective and the norm of this forum is to analyze past trend to forecast future trend while other side information is also taken into consideration. For example Jason Kenney hinted last year that they are getting rid of the backlog to achieve JIT processing in future application, i.e 2013 applicants for example will be in Canada within the fiscal year of submitting an application. This gives a clue that though the procedure might be as the same for 2013 as the pending applications but the timeline might be significantly shorter.
