Decades of waiting in store for Canada immigration applicants

Image credit: Jeyalekshman SJ on Unsplash.

If you waiting for your Canadian immigration to come through, you are in for a wait. A long wait. A very long wait.

Here’s an example of how unviable IRCC’s processing system has become.

If you have applied for permanent residence (PR) under Canada’s humanitarian and compassionate stream face, the wait time could be 12 to 600 months (one to 50 years).

It’s up to 420 months (35 years) for entrepreneurs under the startup visa stream.

108 months (nine years) for the caregivers pathway.

228 months (19 years) for the agri-food stream.

And so on.

Check out IRCC’s online processing time checker here. It even comes with a disclaimer: “Your application may take longer than the times shown here. They’re not a maximum or a guarantee.”

Recently the Canadian government announced plans to significantly reduce immigration targets for 2025-27.

Anecdotal evidence suggest significantly higher refusal rates.

With Canada reducing immigration in-take and applications continuing to pour in, the system is clogged.

Toronto Star reported recently that “the latest immigration data shows that there were 2.2 million immigration applications in the system as of Aug. 31, including 958,850 in backlog for exceeding service standards. Fifty-two per cent of permanent residence and 42 per cent of temporary residence applications were considered backlogged.”