Sponsorship process improvements - Shorter Processing Time

Submitted by jayakiran02 on Thu, 02/15/2018 - 01:28 
***NEWS SHARE FROM IRCC***

February 14, 2018 – Mississauga, ON – Over the past year, the Government of Canada has made significant improvements to the spousal sponsorship process, making it faster and easier for Canadians and permanent residents to reunite with their spouses.

To bring families together, IRCC plans to welcome 66,000 spouses and dependants in 2018, 
well above the average over the past decade of about 47,000.

Today, Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship, announced that the government has successfully met these commitments:

  • More than 80% of those who were in the global spousal sponsorship backlog on December 7, 2016, have now received final decisions for their applications. We reduced the spousal inventory from 75,000 applications to 15,000 as of December 31, 2017.
  • As of December 31, 2017, we met our commitment to process 80% of spousal applications that were received in December 2016

 

****Updated Spousal Application Instructions*****


Spousal applicants will now be asked to submit their Schedule A – Background/Declaration (IMM 5669) form and police certificates as part of their initial paper application package, instead of later in the application process, as was previously required.

This will help IRCC process applications even more quickly and efficiently and avoid unnecessary delays.