CANADA: Immitracker vs. IRCC, immigration processing time insights (February 2024)
Continuing with the case analysis series launched this year, Immitracker is presenting the latest processing time statistics for Canada! With the help of our users who thoughtfully put in their case information, we’re able to glean valuable insights regarding actual processing times for the most popular Canadian immigration programs.
For each visa and immigration program and citizenship, the IRCC provides average processing time estimates. These official estimates by program can be found here. From the cases that get logged in the Canadian trackers on Immitracker, we noticed that the actual processing times can vary significantly from the ones presented by the IRCC.
February 2024 High Level Processing Time Comparison
This time we’re presenting the analysis for February 2024 and the programs that Immitracker took for our analysis are from the most popular trackers and include:
In the graph below, we display the government processing time estimates for each of these programs (published the week of March 18th) on the left side and the actual processing time estimates calculated by Immitracker on the right side. The Immitracker numbers were calculated based on the cases that successfully finished processing in February.
February 2024 Processing Time Analysis by Program
In this section, we break down our Immitracker processing time insights by individual program including the quantity of cases that were analyzed and the number of days it took on average for the case to go from submission to completion.
Citizenship
For Citizenship applicants, we analyzed 45 cases that received their Oath Letter in February 2024. This entire process took them on average 6 months.
The Oath Letter is one of the final steps in the citizenship application process - in this letter, the IRCC provides the applicant with an invitation to and date for their citizenship ceremony. During the citizenship ceremony, the applicant formally becomes a Canadian citizen and receives their citizenship certificate shortly thereafter.
The Express Entry analysis includes the Canadian Experience Class, Federal Skilled Worker, and Express Entry Provincial Nominee programs. We indicate the quantity of cases we analyzed for each of the programs and the average number of days it took these applicants to receive a PPR (Passport Request) in February 2024.
Express Entry Canadian Experience Class (CEC) Program
For Canadian Experience Class (CEC) applicants, a total of 14 cases received their PPR in February 2024 and it on average took them 175 days in order to receive it.
Express Entry Provincial Nominee Programs (PNPs)
For Provincial Nominee (PNP) through Express Entry applicants, a total of 23 cases received their PPR in February 2024 and it on average took them 76 days in order to receive it.
PNPs are moving so much quicker than the rest of the Express Entry programs! The processing times decreased by a couple of months from January to February.
Express Entry Federal Skilled Worker Program (FSW) Program
For Federal Skilled Worker (FSW) applicants, a total of 31 cases received their PPR in February 2024 and it on average took them 121 days in order to receive it.
We discovered that in February, a decent amount of FSW cases completed processing compared to December and January when we were barely able to find a significant enough of a sample size to analyze. The FSW case processing (for the cases logged on Immitracker) was slowed down at the end of 2023 and beginning of 2024 until February.
February 2024 Summary Infographic
If you’re interested in getting a copy of our data analysis summaries, you can download them along with the infographic for free at the following link!
Looking for processing time insights for other programs? Check out the Immitracker trackers or reach out to us through our Contact Form and we can help you find the answers!
