I filed my federal skilled worker applications before February 27, 2008, why I haven’t heard of anything yet?

Many people who filed their Canadian permanent residence applications under the federal skilled worker class before February 27, 2008 have not received any decision yet, not even a confirmation that their applications are being processed. According to the latest information from Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC), there are approximately 335,000 people in the CIC backlog. As of December 2010, 80% of these applications are being processed within 62 months. That is to say, most people who filed their applications before the end of 2005 should have received a result. For those who filed after 2005, chances are they will still have to wait. According to CIC, the 62-month processing time frame has been a decrease of a peak of 68 months in 2007.

Applications filed after February 27, 2008 and before June 26, 2010 are subject to modified conditions and procedure set out in Ministerial Instructions (commonly referred to as MI1). Processing time for these applications was considerably shorter. Our next blog will give further details.