New rules for skilled applications

On the 15th of June, Citizenship and Immigration Canada came up with the plan to process applications of Federal Skilled Workers in a year or even lesser.

Under the old system, i.e. cases which were received before the 27th of February 2008, applications took about six years to be processed. Under that system, all applications were sent to visa posts which were never required to finalize an application under a given period of time. Cases suffered and hundreds of thousand of backlog was knocking the door of immigration department. As a result of this, our immigration department was generally kept busy on old files which involved applicants, most of whom do not wish to come to Canada any more.

An ‘Action Plan for Faster Immigration’ was announced of the 28th of November 2008 with its applications on all cases submitted on or after 27th of February 2008. The plan was also accompanied by an undertaking by Canada’s Immigration Minister Jason Kenney to process new cases in a period of six to twelve months.

The screening of these new cases is taking place at a new Centralized Intake Office, CIO, in Sydney, Nova Scotia. After getting the application fee, the CIO creates a computer file, enters all the important data into the system and also verifies the work experience entered by the applicant. Those who fail to qualify are sent a letter stating their ineligibility and that they would soon get their refund.

If the applicant qualifies then his or her electronic data is transferred to the appropriate visa post and a letter is sent by the CIO to the applicant stating that the concerned visa post must be provided with all supportive materials in not more than 120 days.