flx2015 said:
my wife isn't visa exempt like the majority of applicants on your spreadsheet, and i can't visit her for more than two weeks a year unless i resign from my job. i have tried getting her to apply for a TRV but that didn't work either because the VO is not convinced that she has adequate ties to her home country. it has been almost a year since i saw her face. so yeah, given our situation, i believe my impatience is justified and wanting to be together again is totally worth obsessing over.
I get that part of it. Yes it's true the majority of applicants who apply through London are visa-exempt. LVO is helping with the backlog from Islamabad because the current processing time there is over 2 years. So at least you're up on the deal by going through London.
The fact of the matter is, though, that applicants from non-visa exempt countries, like your wife, and very likely going to be subject to longer wait times. Mary23, who just posted a bit up this thread, was a 2014 applicant and just got COPR for her husband this month, about two years. Other non-visa exempt applicants go faster (gotocanada2016 was 278 days, hs64 was 223 days, sdh was a very fast 122 days, all via London), but others take way longer (Telia 343 days, MrExpat still waiting, tony000 476 days, Bubbles87 347 days, and so on). I'm not trying to be a downer, but it's simply the reality of the situation that non-visa exempt applicants generally will take longer.
So while I get your impatience and your wanting to see your wife again (my husband and I were also separated for a period while we were sorting out immigration stuff), you also need to be realistic about the situation, and obsessing isn't going to help.
I don't know when you applied, but I'll take a guess at November 2015. If that's the case, you should have your sponsor approval already since that part doesn't depend on the PA's nationality or visa-exempt status, it's entirely on you as the Canadian. The average processing time via London is right now about 10-11 months, which means that if your application sticks on average processing time then you won't hear anything until September at the earliest, so at least another month.
You absolutely cannot stress out about not getting more requests for information or anything like that because it's simply not an indicator that anything is amiss or that CIC has not yet looked at your application. Most people have some kind of request, whether it's more documents or just photos, but not everyone does. Have a skim down the "Extra docs requested" column (column G) - not everyone has a request. And some peopel have the request only a week before going to DM, while others have a request and then don't get DM for months. tony000 had requests on 9-Mar but didn't get DM until 16-Jun. hassan51214 on the other hand had no requests for anything and went straight to DM. tramper then had DM on 25-Sep but then had requests for stuff a month later.
So really, you can't read too much into it. The spreadsheet helps give you a rough idea, but it only takes a bit of time at looking at individual cases to realize just how individual the whole process is.
So as I said, chill.
with that said, i wasn't trying to put anyone on the spot and i do realize that none of us work at CIC, so i'll refrain from talking about this any further. i will PM you my info so you can add me to the spreadsheet.
I'll look out for your PM.