Outland applications:
I understand that applications start processing in Case Processing Centre: Sydney, Nova Scotia. Then it gets transferred to the local visa office outside Canada. Does anyone have a clear idea when and if the application get returned to cpc Sydney? More specifically, it would be great to know if what I have here is correct (I’m trying to understand the journey of the application between offices back and forth):
CPC Sydney:
1- Biometrics
2- Medicals
3- Sponsor approval
Local office (outside Canada):
1- Relationship
2- PA eligibility
3- Background checks
4- Final decision on application
I think this is basically correct. (Not that I think knowing this chnages much)
A few small things I'd add (note I don't really know about inland applications):
1) in Sydney, there's a preliminary assessment / evaluation made, basically at same time as the others. Improtant because this is probably the first evaulation that makes an assessment about whether eg interview is needed and highlights if there are any noticeable issues. Mind, it's short and not final of course.
2) "Local office" can be offices in Canada instead - less of this lately but before many went to mississauga. Then for a while many were going to Ottawa.
3) Sometimes there are those here who think they know that eg ones that go to such and such an office are the 'easy' files or other tea-leaf reading diagnoses. Those reasons may not be stable and may just be temporary. And attempts to crack the code of the black box from outside may often just be wrong (we see patterns where there may not be any).
4) Same but even more strong comment for whether it means files will be quick or slow. It's easy to make wrong conclusions.
3) "Local" may not be local (to the applicant), and may not always be the traditional 'assigned' offices. For a while they were moving files out of London to Warsaw (presumably not doing that now, viz Ukraine) and to other under-utilized offices. Loadsharing basically.
4) There was a period when files were being 'sent' to other offices esp Beijing - and then it turned out Beijing was doing a sort-of middle office function, clearly doing some work on it but final decision was in [some other local office.]
5) All of these were both covid related things and initiatives to clear the backlog and 'process changes' (with more digital and electronic files etc). Since IRCC has announced that many of these are going 'electronic' (probably soon enough they will start to accept primarily electronic submissions as the default), some of this is going to change.
Fundamentally apart from physically putting the visa in the passport, almost none of the process HAS to take place in [insert country or visa office or embassy here.] Apart from that, there is not much that HAS to be hard-copy.
Right now is a weird period where eg for inland applications / outland where spouse is in Canada, they issue eCOPR and accept digital submissions of photos for the PR cards - and yet for ETA outland applications, they seem to require sending the physical photos so a printed COPR can be mailed. It doesn't strictly make a lot of sense. And they could cut a lot of this down and are, bit by bit.
