hila01 said:
Hello Accra, this is from one applicant from LVO. You would have seen the part written boldly from the encounter with his visa officer. I hope AVO is also aware of the 1 year deadline given by CIC Minister
Pls go through the link below
http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/resources/publications/annual-report-2013/section1.asp
Excerpts from the link;
Eliminating Backlogs and Improving Processing Times
Application backlogs in a number of programs pose significant challenges to the immigration system, and reducing and eliminating them is a priority for CIC. The FSW Program backlog, which in 2008 had peaked at more than 640,000 people, has been particularly problematic as it constituted a major roadblock to Canada’s ability to respond to rapidly changing labour market needs. The sizable proportion of CIC’s processing capacity for this program was dedicated to clearing applications that were up to eight years old, and this hampered CIC’s ability to process applications from persons whose skills are needed today. The continued presence of this backlog was unfair to applicants and delayed the transition to a fast, flexible and responsive immigration system. Since the launch in 2008 of the Action Plan for Faster Immigration, CIC has limited the intake of new applications under this program. As a result of these efforts, CIC reduced the pre-2008 backlog by more than 50 percent and the overall FSW inventory by over 25 percent. However, the size of the backlog demanded further action and CIC introduced three notable measures in 2012.
First, in February 2012, CIC and participating provinces and territories launched the FSW Backlog Reduction Pilot to respond to Canada’s labour market needs while also further drawing down the backlog. Under the terms of the pilot, FSW applicants with work experience required by provinces and territories were redirected to these provinces for possible nomination under provincial nominee programs (PNP).
A more significant measure was introduced in the Jobs, Growth and Long-term Prosperity Act, which received Royal Assent on June 29, 2012. Under this law, CIC terminated around 98,000 FSW Program applications received before February 27, 2008, that had not received a decision before March 29, 2012. The law required that all fees paid to CIC be returned to the applicants. This substantial reduction of the FSW Program application backlog is now smoothing the transition to an increasingly fast and flexible economic immigration system.
The third measure was a temporary pause on the acceptance of new FSW applications, apart from those with valid job offers and students pursuing Canadian PhDs. Implemented July 1, 2012, this measure enabled CIC to focus its processing resources for the FSW Program on the remaining applications received since 2008. The pause remained in place until May 2013, and allowed CIC to develop and implement the program changes mentioned above and make
considerable progress toward the goal of processing all FSW applications by the end of 2014. As a result of these efforts, the FSW backlog has been reduced to approximately 65,000 persons as of the end of July 2013.
To address the growing backlog and wait times in the Parents and Grandparents Program, CIC launched the Action Plan for Faster Family Reunification at the end of 2011. On November 5, 2011, the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration issued Ministerial Instructions that temporarily put a pause on the acceptance of new sponsorship applications for parents and grandparents so that CIC could process the applications already received. With the inflow of new applications paused, CIC was able to accelerate backlog reduction by increasing admissions on existing applications by up to 50,000 over 2012 and 2013. Under Ministerial Instructions issued in June 2013, CIC will begin accepting new applications in 2014.
On December 1, 2011, CIC introduced the Parent and Grandparent Super Visa, as a follow-up measure to the temporary pause on new parent and grandparent applications. The super visa is a multiple-entry, temporary resident visa (TRV) that allows eligible parents and grandparents of Canadian citizens and permanent residents to visit Canada for up to 24 months at a time over a 10-year period. As of the end of June 2013, over 20,000 super visas had been issued, representing an 85-percent approval rate since the launch of the visa.
The Department continued to reduce the backlog of in-Canada refugee claims. In late 2009, the backlog peaked at 62,000. This restricted Canada’s ability to provide timely protection to refugee claimants in genuine need of protection. It also reduced Canada’s ability to remove those not in need of protection from Canada in a timely manner. As of June 2013, the backlog of cases that were referred to the Immigration and Refugee Board (IRB) prior to the coming into force of the Balanced Refugee Reform Act and the Protecting Canada’s Immigration System Act was reduced to 24,000.
The centralization of intake for in-Canada Pre-Removal Risk Assessment (PRRA) applicants and applications for permanent residence under humanitarian and compassionate (H&C) grounds in April 2011 has greatly improved the Government of Canada’s approach to managing applications. CIC is better able to move work around its network to where capacity exists and enhance the coordination across Canada between CIC and the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA), allowing for more rapid identification of priority work and the processing of both PRRA and H&C applications in greater volumes.
The focus is on the forth paragraph which talks about the third measure and the hilite. I think that irrespective of the time you applied for fsw whether in may 2013 or march 2014 or the time PER was issued, all applications should be processed by the end of 2014 all things being equal hence the word 'considerable' in the statement. This corroborates jigzsy's statement at the interview section where the visa officer emphasized on one year. I believe the one year should be by end of 2014 . Also from this link, cic never mentioned fsw 2014, which I think may not happen. Their focus is to clear all backlogs including fsw 2013 which we are part off before EOI takes off possibly jan 2015. this is my take on it. Any better analysis or suggestion will be appreciated by forumites. Like Floxzy said, MR should start anytime soon for fsw 2013 and PPR and PRV may follow in quick successions for the simple reason that fsw 2013 is a lot simplified for VOs. Only BG, security/criminality checks. No education credentials check since it was done by WES or any other ECA. I believe this ECA would have caused a lot of delays for fsws before 2013 since VOs will have to write each school to verify certificates and you know in naija it can take forever. In my case I was visiting unilag to beg them to check their PMB and email box regularly. You can imagine if it were VOs to the schools.
Cheers