Canada immigration is looking to speed up spousal sponsorship application processing.
In a major update, the Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) has announced that the department is aiming to accelerate, prioritize and finalize 6,000 spousal sponsorship applications each month between October and December 2020.
In order to reduce wait times and process spousal sponsorship applications more quickly; IRCC has increased the number of staff that will review these applications by 66 per cent.
Moreover, IRCC is also planning to utilize new technology in a pilot to digitize paper applications, which will allow IRCC employees working remotely at various work settings, to process spousal applications more quickly.
What is Canadian Spousal Sponsorship?
Spousal Sponsorship Program is a subsection of the Family Class immigration category and allows the Canadian permanent residents and citizens to sponsor their spouse or Common-law-partner to obtain Permanent Residency in Canada.
Canada gives highest priority to the processing of Family Class applications. IRCC generally processes applications submitted through the Spousal Sponsorship Program within 12 months.
However, coronavirus pandemic has created uncertainty among Canadian citizens and permanent residents looking to sponsor their spouse as Spousal sponsorship application processing has been impacted greatly by the pandemic resulting in delays and longer processing times.
Canada continues to seek innovative and compassionate ways to bring families together during the current global health crisis. These initiatives taken by IRCC will result in 49,000 applications receiving decisions by the end of the year 2020.
Prior to the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, Canada had a target of admitting 70,000 spouses, partners, and dependent children among the overall 341,000 immigrants in 2020 under its Immigration Levels Plan 2020-2022.
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