December 2009

Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC) has published it's newest processing times for the year 2009 and we are going to look a bit deeper in those new numbers. There are currently 44 full service visa offices outside of Canada.

As a note, we want to mention that numbers for the newly created Canadian experience class as well as the revamped Federal skilled worker class will only be available in spring 2010.

The big picture shows, that the overall processing times have gone up again and that the total neglect of the CIC department by the federal government becomes more and more evident. As the Government has pointed out right from the start, immigration is not a priority and that it favours temporary foreign employment over immigration of qualified workers as well as family reunion.

The creation of a separate border security agency (CBSA) has additionally taken resources and staff away from CIC and the agency is now chronically understaffed, be it in Canada as well as in most of the foreign missions.

Analyzing the 2009 numbers in the Spousal Sponsorship immigration class, we can see that the majority of missions stayed approximately in the same spot they were in 2008. The biggest advancers were smaller offices and some of the bigger CIC offices saw quite a drop in their ranking.

Top advancers in 2009 were the offices in Santiago, Chile with an astonishing advance of 10 positions (now ranking #7 out of 44) as well as Sao Paulo, Brazil (advancing 4 positions to rank # 20) and Berlin, Germany (advancing 4 positions to rank # 32).

Top decliners in 2009 were the offices in Buffalo, U.S.A with an incredible decline of 5 positions (now ranking # 23) as well as Mexico City, Mexico (declining 4 positions to rank # 27), Rabat, Morocco (declining 4 positions to rank # 34) as well as Kingston, Jamaica (declining 4 positions to rank # 35).

The top two CIC offices are still the same as in 2008: Taipei, Taiwan and Beijing, China. The two worst ranked CIC offices are also the same as in 2008: Accra, Ghana and Nairobi, Kenya

Buffalo as well as Mexico City both added between 1 and 2 month to the current processing times. The slow down in Mexico City is probably partially to blame on the new Visa regulations for Mexican nationals, but also due to the long processing of Authority to return to Canada (ARC) applications which take now longer than a year and add to the timelines for spousal sponsorship applications.

To explain the huge drop in ranking for Buffalo, we can only think of a possible surge in demand, since staff levels in Buffalo and their satellite offices all over the US have not moved much over the last few years.

Our biggest advancer, Santiago de Chile is also one of the two smallest CIC offices worldwide (with Tel Aviv, Israel) and since this office is only processing applications from Chile, fluctuations of this sort are probably expected with such a small volume. Sao Paulo on the other hand has been improving their processing times for two years now and is, in our opinion, becoming very efficient. It's no surprise that Sao Paulo has now jumped into 3rd spot of all CIC offices in the Americas region (after Santiago, Chile and Havana, Cuba)

The complete 2009 processing times for all immigration classes:

Citizenship and Immigration Canada
http://www.immigration-quebec.gouv.qc.ca/en/index.html