Sponsorship approval processing times

[VanessaF]

Hey, I'm hoping someone can help me out here.

I'm a Canadian sponsoring my Japanese common-law partner from within Canada. I'm a full-time student and my partner can't work until I get approved to be a sponsor. We sent in our application in mid October, 2015 and haven't received a thing since mailing it in. The CIC website isn't very clear, and now that they have changed their way of processing and don't have individual processing times on their webpage. I feel like I'm in the dark. Should I have received something? It's been almost 6 months and I haven't gotten anything in the mail about my application for the first step of sponsoring. Is this normal?

I'd like to know if I should have received something by now, and if not how long most sponsors have waited. My partner really would like to work because money is getting pretty tight.

Thanks in advance guys!

 

[Riley Haas]

Hi Vanessa,
I know that under the Conservatives, approving the sponsor of an inland applicant and getting the work permit processed was a priority (under two months a lot of the time) but things may have changed now that the Liberals have taken over. (For example, we know that the processing of the Syrian refugees had negative impacts on processing times across the board, particularly with regard to PR Card renewal applications.)
But I don't personally know what the current processing time is supposed to be. There's this ominous message when you look up the processing time:

Work permit applications may be submitted after 16 months.

My interpretation of that is that it might be 16 months. But let me see if I can find out anything different for you.

 

[Riley Haas]

Okay so have a look at this:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Yn3BFzI4q4xAy4EW3pG4CgQz9o3EzF5b18_tcSJwBhA/
This is a crowd-sourced spreadsheet tracking inland sponsorships through Canada Visa's forum. The news is not good. And it's significantly worse than I thought for when the Conservatives were in power too. Though this one is only dealing with 2013 applicants, if you scroll down to the rows in the 360s, you'll see that the sponsor is getting approved 16 months after the submission of the application.

 

[VanessaF]

Thanks for the reply.
Looking at the link you left, it states that applicants received an AOR (Acknowledgement of receipt). I sent mine in the 3rd week of October 2015, and the list says that others have been recieving their AOR between Feb-April.

I'm hoping it didnt get lost in the mail or something, and a lot of those documents would be almost impossible for me to replace from here.

 

[Riley Haas]

Have you tried calling the Call Centre? They should be able to at least tell you whether or not it's received (unless it is still not opened...)