SPECIAL EDITION CANADA: Immitracker vs. IRCC, immigration processing time insights (May & June 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.
May & June 2024 High Level Processing Time Comparison
This time we’re presenting the analysis for both May and June 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 by the IRCC on July 3rd) 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 May and June (broken down separately by month). Case timelines were counted from the moment an application receives the Acknowledgement of Receipt (AOR) until the final processing milestone (Passport Request / PPR or final letter).
May 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 AOR to completion.
Citizenship
For Citizenship applicants, we analyzed 29 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 May 2024. This entire process took them on average around 115 days / 3.8 months.
Citizenship has been moving unusually quickly starting April 2024! We have seen it on average take 3.5-5 months which is much quicker than what it used to be (minimum 6 months and longer). It looks like the IRCC has begun to prioritize citizenship application processing times this year.
Express Entry Provincial Nominee Programs (PNPs)
For Provincial Nominee (PNP) through Express Entry applicants, a total of 10 cases received their PPR in May 2024 and it on average took them 194 days / 6.5 months in order to receive it.
Compared to the beginning of the year, PNP processing times have significantly slowed down. They used to take 3-4 months before. We’re now seeing less cases complete on the trackers every month and they’re taking much longer to process.
There was one outlier case that came up: it took 902 days to process! If this case is factored into the processing time averages, they go up from 6.5 months to 8.8 months for PNPs in the month of May - a massive shift from the trends we were seeing just two months earlier.
Express Entry Federal Skilled Worker Program (FSW) Program
For Federal Skilled Worker (FSW) applicants, a total of 18 cases received their PPR in May 2024 and it on average took them 123 days / 4.1 months in order to receive it.
FSW timelines remain relatively quick at around 4 months. There was only one outlier case that came up in May and it took 525 days to process (significantly longer than the averages given that it took almost 1.5 years).
Express Entry Canadian Experience Class (CEC) Program
For Canadian Experience Class (CEC) applicants, a total of 28 cases received their PPR in May 2024 and it on average took them 144 days / 4.8 months in order to receive it.
CEC is no longer the slowest moving Express Entry program! Processing times dropped down to under 5 months and we have been seeing many cases complete opposed to the beginning of the year when there was very little movement.
It looks like all three Express Entry programs had outlier cases come up in May. For CEC, the longest case took 575 days to process. Both for the CEC and PNP outlier cases that took significantly longer to process, the nationality of the applicant was Chinese.
We are looking into further data to investigate this correlation between application processing times and nationality.
May 2024 Summary Infographic
June 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 AOR to completion.
Citizenship
For Citizenship applicants, we analyzed 20 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 June 2024. This entire process took them on average around 134 days / 4.5 months.
Continuing with the April/May trend, citizenship processing times remain very quick for new applications and take under 5 months.
Express Entry Provincial Nominee Programs (PNPs)
For Provincial Nominee (PNP) through Express Entry applicants, a total of 20 cases received their PPR in June 2024 and it on average took them 160 days / 5.3 months in order to receive it.
Again, we see an outlier case come up in this month as well which took significantly longer to process than the other ones - 980 days. This case significantly impacted the processing time averages, the second longest case only took 224 days in comparison.
Express Entry Federal Skilled Worker Program (FSW) Program
For Federal Skilled Worker (FSW) applicants, a total of 12 cases received their PPR in June 2024 and it on average took them 179 days / 6 months in order to receive it.
The outlier case for June took 556 days to process fully. We’re now seeing a trend of long held up cases being finalized across all Express Entry programs over the past couple of months.
Express Entry Canadian Experience Class (CEC) Program
For Canadian Experience Class (CEC) applicants, a total of 33 cases received their PPR in June 2024 and it on average took them 148 days / 5 months in order to receive it.
Again, we’re seeing the improvements in CEC when it comes to both application processing time reduction and quantity of applications processed (especially compared to the winter).
The longest outlier case for CEC in June took 608 days to process and is the third example of a delayed case for a Chinese national which we noticed in this report.
June 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!
