Immitracker vs. IRCC: immigration processing time insights (October 2023)
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 from the ones presented by the IRCC.
October 2023 High Level Processing Time Comparison
This time we’re presenting the analysis for October 2023 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 November 6th) 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 October.
October 2023 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 the cases that received their Oath Letter in October 2023. 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 October 2023.
Express Entry Canadian Experience Class (CEC) Program
For Canadian Experience Class (CEC) applicants, a total of 16 cases received their PPR in October 2023 and it on average took them 154 days in order to receive it.
This trend is quite consistent with the analysis from last month where the average processing time for CEC applicants on Immitracker was 153 days.
Express Entry Federal Skilled Worker Program (FSW) Program
For Federal Skilled Worker (FSW) applicants, a total of 18 cases received their PPR in October 2023 and it on average took them 193 days in order to receive it.
What’s interesting this month is that the longest case took 1426 days to process! This case is an outlier that can be viewed on Immitracker - the user who logged it commented that he had submitted it back in 2019 and used a writ of mandamus to accelerate his case processing in 2023.
With the outlier case, the average processing time for FSW was 193 days this month. Without it, the average was 139 days. Which goes to show how big of an impact the longer, outlier cases have on the processing time estimates.
Express Entry Provincial Nominee Programs (PNPs)
For Provincial Nominee (PNP) through Express Entry applicants, a total of 13 cases received their PPR in October 2023 and it on average took them 198 days in order to receive it.
Spousal Sponsorship
Additionally, we gathered and analyzed the data of Spousal Sponsorship Outland applicants from September and October 2023. For Outland cases, the spouse is based outside of Canada.
A total of 11 cases received their PPR and it on average took them 237 days in order to receive it.
October 2023 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!
