Hello Everyone, hope everyone is good and best of luck to all who have submitted their applications for processing. Felt like sharing something as everyone is quite curious regarding the processing of their applications. CIC issued invitations as below:
2015: 31,063 (January to December)
2016: 33,782 (January to December)
2017: 24,652 (January to March)
We can clearly see that CIC has issued huge number of invitations in only the first 3 months of 2017, due to which, now all the applicants will have to wait longer than usual or the processing will start later on as CIC has mentioned on their website:
'This is normal because the volume of applications may vary from one month to the next. Rest assured that files are still being processed.
In many cases, a file is waiting in a queue for initial review. Applications are processed in the order in which they arrive. Some take longer to process than others. There is no maximum time frame for reviewing an application.'
From this, we can understand that people who got ITA on March 01, 2017 have 17,019 applications waiting before their application for initial review and those who got ITA on March 24, 2017 have 20,903 applications waiting before their application for initial review.
I have not taken into account the people who have not submitted their applications for processing and those who have declined the invitations or are not eligible anymore due to changes in circumstances. The above figures are gross without any deductions.
Moreover, priority is being given to CEC candidates as per my observations.
In addition, the number of CIC staff is same regardless of these huge number of invitations in just the first 3 months, a similar number, which they used to process in a year or so and maybe now it will take more time than before as people who submitted applications in February and March 2017 are still on their initial stage and their medicals are not even changed to passed (for the majority of applicants).
I know it is hard to wait but patience is the only friend at the moment.
Thank you.