SPECIAL EDITION CANADA: Immitracker vs. IRCC, immigration processing time insights (July & August 2024)
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.
This time we’re presenting the analysis for both July and August 2024 and the programs that Immitracker took for our analysis are from the most popular trackers and include:
Key Report Takeaways
In the graph below, we display the government processing time estimates for each of the programs (last updated by the IRCC on September 4th) on the left side and the actual processing time estimates calculated by Immitracker on the right side. Below are some of the most interesting observations we made based on this data:
None of the government time estimates for any of the programs have been changed since July. For the programs listed below, the same data the IRCC presented for processing time estimates in July is currently being displayed for September.
Unfortunately, we weren’t able to present the processing time estimates for FSW in July because not enough cases on Immitracker finished processing that month to provide a sufficient sample size. That in it of itself is an indicator that the FSW case quantity has dropped quite a bit over this summer.
PNPs continue to display outlier cases that took significantly over processing times to complete. For both July and August, cases that took 500+ days to process can be found. Could it be that this summer the IRCC was catching up on a forgotten PNP case backlog?
Citizenship grant is the only program listed below where the Immitracker processing times significantly differ from the IRCC time estimates. It’s for the fourth month in a row now that we see citizenship processing accelerating and taking under 5 months to be completed.
The Immitracker numbers were calculated based on the cases that successfully finished processing in July and August (broken down separately by month). Case timelines were counted from application submission to final approval.
In the July and August sections below, 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 (the moment an application is submitted) to final processing milestone (Passport Request / PPR or final letter).
July 2024 Processing Time Analysis by Program
Citizenship
For Citizenship applicants, we analyzed 25 cases that received their Oath Letter (the letter in which the IRCC provides the applicant with an invitation to and date for their citizenship ceremony) in July 2024. This entire process took them on average around 144 days / 4.8 months.
Citizenship has been moving unusually quickly starting April! It’s still taking under 5 months to receive the oath letter even though the IRCC displayed timeline for the entire process is 7 months. Looks like the citizenship application processing remains a priority for the IRCC this year.
Express Entry Provincial Nominee Programs (PNPs)
For Provincial Nominee (PNP) through Express Entry applicants, a total of 17 cases received their PPR in July 2024 and it on average took them 173 days / 5.8 months in order to receive it.
PNPs continue to display outlier cases that take over 500 days every month. It’s interesting to see how while the citizenship processing times significantly accelerated over the year, the PNP processing slowed down by 1-2 months and remains slowed down for the entire summer.
Express Entry Canadian Experience Class (CEC) Program
For Canadian Experience Class (CEC) applicants, a total of 18 cases received their PPR in July 2024 and it on average took them 135 days / 4.5 months in order to receive it.
CEC remains very consistent with its 4-5 month processing times and reflects the IRCC stated timelines as well. Out of our selection, it’s likely the most consistent program in terms of processing times in 2024.
July 2024 Summary Infographic
August 2024 Processing Time Analysis by Program
Citizenship
For Citizenship applicants, we analyzed 23 cases that received their Oath Letter (the letter in which the IRCC provides the applicant with an invitation to and date for their citizenship ceremony) in August 2024. This entire process took them on average around 138 days / 4.6 months.
The August takeaways for citizenship remain the same as for July - the processing time is taking consistently less than 5 months.
Express Entry Provincial Nominee Programs (PNPs)
For Provincial Nominee (PNP) through Express Entry applicants, a total of 11 cases received their PPR in August 2024 and it on average took them 165 days / 5.5 months in order to receive it.
As in July, we see that we have an outlier case for PNP that took over 500 days and affected the average processing time significantly. What’s also interesting is that the longest case processing times from the past few months weren’t even for the same nationality. From July-August, a couple of outlier cases were from India nationals and one was from a Jamaican national.
Express Entry Federal Skilled Worker Program (FSW) Program
For Federal Skilled Worker (FSW) applicants, a total of 13 cases received their PPR in August 2024 and it on average took them 154 days / 5.1 months in order to receive it.
Unfortunately, we didn’t have sufficient data for FSW from July to provide the analysis. FSW hasn’t been seeing many cases come in and complete over the past few months in general which seems to indicate that the focus of the IRCC over the past few months has indeed been on inland program applicants.
Express Entry Canadian Experience Class (CEC) Program
For Canadian Experience Class (CEC) applicants, a total of 23 cases received their PPR in August 2024 and it on average took them 127 days / 4.2 months in order to receive it.
As mentioned in the July summary above, CEC remains the most consistent program in terms of timeline correlation to IRCC estimates and higher quantity of cases completed over the past few months.
August 2024 Summary Infographic
If you’re interested in getting a copy of our data analysis summaries, you can download them along with the infographics 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!
