Permanent residence tracker: Canada PR applicants can now track their case status online
Permanent Residence Tracker: View Case Status Online for Canada PR
Here’s the latest development in the Canadian immigration process – Canada has launched an online permanent residence application tracker for people sponsoring or being sponsored as a spouse, partner, or dependent child. The move follows last week’s announcement by Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC), outlining a plan to modernize Canada’s immigration system and lower wait times for people applying to immigrate, visit, work, or study in the country.
Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship, Sean Fraser, today announced the launch of this new digital case status tracker. In the initial stage, the tracker is available for permanent residence applicants in the spouse, partner, and dependent child categories. Similar solutions will be extended to other applicant categories as steps are implemented to improve and introduce new tools to support clients.
According to IRCC, this new tool will allow some family class permanent residence applicants, sponsors, and their representatives to more easily check their application status online, including historical information, and keep track of any actions required. The tool is said to give applicants and their representatives access to all of the same information they would get if they contact IRCC.
While the new tracker is a welcome tool in the immigration application process, some users have already taken to social media to point out that the form does not allow users to proceed unless they have a given name and last name. Some others took to social media to question IRCC on the current backlog of applications that have been on the backburner since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. “How about people waiting since July 2019? It’s been more than 30 months since I have applied fir PR. When I will get it finalized?,” tweeted Ravi Ahir.
According to a media release issued by the Canadian government, “IRCC interacts with millions of clients in Canada and around the world every year, and we receive a high volume of application update requests by phone and by email at our Client Support Centre. We want to make sure clients can get timely answers to their application inquiries online. The development of digital case status trackers is part of IRCC’s ongoing efforts to provide meaningful and transparent information to clients, and to modernize our services to better respond to their needs.”
Before the COVID-19 pandemic, the average time it took for the IRCC to process Permanent Resident applications was 6 months. According to reports, as of October 2021, the IRCC has a backlog of around 1.8 million immigration applications.
Also read: Stuck in the Express Entry pool for Canada immigration? Here’s what you can do
Despite the enormous impact that COVID-19 has had on all walks of life including the Canadian economy, immigration continues to be a source of long-term economic growth for the country.
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