Before the pandemic, the average processing time for overseas spousal sponsorship was less than 12 months, according to IRCC’s website. The review process for overseas applicants involves the collaboration between the Canadian office in Sydney and a local visa office in the applicant’s home country.
The global pandemic has made that collaboration challenging.
“With COVID everything shut down; mails got shut down. The different visa offices were hit in different ways, and they all had different processes because they're all in different countries (with) different responses to the pandemic. So it just dramatically lengthens the processing time,” said Thiago Buchert, a Halifax-based immigration lawyer.
