Did you know that in 2015 almost 70,000 couples applied for spousal sponsorship in Canada? Sadly, there were 48,000 spots allotted, so this led to huge wait times and a lot of frustrated couples left in limbo. But the Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) is looking to keep this from ever happening again.
Last year in 2016, processing wait times for spousal sponsorship was an average of about 22 months for in-Canada applications, and 16 months for outside of Canada (Overseas Spousal Sponsorship). These are better than the 27 and 18 averages from 2014, but The Government of Canada is committed to bringing down these processing times to 12 months.
How will they do it?
Allowing More Spouses, Partners, and Children into Canada
First of all, they will open the number of spaces available in the immigration plan. They will be allowing 12 000 more spouses, partners and dependent children to be admitted to Canada, which means more people will be approved.
“I have always felt it was wrong for the heavy hand of the Canadian state to keep people apart for two years,” said Federal Immigration Minister John McCallum, in an interview with The Canadian Press.
He added, “People are more productive citizens when they are with their families, when they are at ease in their home life, so I think it is good for the country as a whole.”
Increasing Funding
Progress takes money and the Government is backing its 12-month promise with $25 million in funding, allocated to IRCC to direct and focus resources to help significantly reduce the backlog and processing times.
This money will go to desperately needed resources, as there is a current backlog of about 80,000 applications in the system.
