This is a bit long & I haven’t wanted to bore anyone with these details until now, and there is a reason.
My student visa application from mid-Jan 2020 did not get processed until mid-July 2022 — 30 months or 2.5 years! (And, a work permit from Jan 2019 took 3.5 years!!!) Registered letters to the Edmonton CPC processing office and getting my MP involved did absolutely nothing to move these files along. Phone calls did nothing but confirm my maintained status. I never got a response from anyone until they actually started looking at both of these in July 2022. I attended school & worked these past several years under maintained status. Meanwhile, I applied for TR2PR in June 2021. So, up until July 2022, I had 3 applications in IRCC’s backlog—one single person with 3 applications for no other reason than changes in personal circumstances and time passing. The work permit application was so old that it became irrelevant/not eligible. When they finally re-approved my Study permit, they issued it as ‘on campus’ work only even though I am completely eligible on every criteria for off campus work. So, I applied for the OWP under TR2PR at the end of July because the current average processing times for amending ‘mistakes’ is around 26 weeks & I had a new off campus job offer waiting on the new permit. A week later they did amend the Study permit to allow off campus work. So I went from 3, down to 1, and now back up to 2 applications in processing.
In comparison, I’ve now been waiting 14.5 months since applying on TR2PR & 3.5 months since AOR. I’m not excusing IRCC’s poor performance, but I am encouraging people not to interpret delays & long processing times on your personal files as meaning something other than what it is—IRCC’s poor performance. Be proactive wherever you can, respond to requests quickly, but don’t let it get you down — reach out to friends & family and know that these crazy processing issues & inconsistencies are not a reflection of your worth.