CANADA: Immitracker vs. IRCC, immigration processing time insights (March 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.

March 2024 High Level Processing Time Comparison

This time we’re presenting the analysis for March 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 (last updated on April 23th) 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 March.

March 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 48 cases that received their Oath Letter in March 2024. This entire process took them on average almost 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.

An interesting observation from the Immitracker team - the government processing times for citizenship have been at 14 months for a few months now. On our end, we noticed that the citizenship processing times have consistently been taking 5-7 months on average.

The Express Entry analysis includes the 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 March 2024.

Express Entry Provincial Nominee Programs (PNPs)

For Provincial Nominee (PNP) through Express Entry applicants, a total of 10 cases received their PPR in March 2024 and it on average took them 144 days in order to receive it.

PNPs used to be the quickest processing program on Immitracker with the average time taking around 3 months. This time around, the processing times for PNPs were at around 5 months.

Express Entry Federal Skilled Worker Program (FSW) Program

For Federal Skilled Worker (FSW) applicants, a total of 12 cases received their PPR in March 2024 and it on average took them 95 days in order to receive it.

FSW timelines significantly decreased in March compared to the start of the year. We were seeing processing times closer to 5-6 months over the past few months. In March, the processing times were closer to 3 months instead.

Additionally, we saw fewer FSW cases completed at the end of 2023 but that tendency changed this spring. Meanwhile, we were unable to gather enough cases to analyze for CEC in March instead due to fewer reaching completion.

March 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!

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AUSTRALIA: Immitracker vs. DOHA, immigration processing time insights (February-March 2024)(SC190 Only)

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CANADA: Immitracker vs. IRCC, immigration processing time insights (February 2024)