You have to wait for months to sponsor your spouse inside Canada. The current spouse or common law partner living in Canada: Outside Quebec is at 34 months. This is from Immigration Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) website.
This significant timeline and has raised the concerns among the spousal Permanent Residency applicants and their sponsors. This is a big delay in processing of their application.
The increase in the processing times is primarily linked to the Canada Immigration Levels Plan. This plan determines how many permanent residents can comer to Canada under various immigration programs.
This means if there are more people applying for PR than available spaces, processing times may increase. In the recent times we have seen the surge in spousal sponsorship applications this is due to increased immigration numbers and Canada’s ongoing commitment to increase family reunification.
34 months processing time means applicant have to wait for almost 3 years before their application is finalized by IRCC. This long wait can cause serious problems over their mental health of the applicant and the sponsor.
These are mostly new couples who are trying to build a better life in Canada and now days life in Canada is expensive as we can see through the Canada inflation rates and not having permanent status in Canada can hinder in many great opportunities and create financial stress.
Couples who want to travel to their home country in case of emergency will face issues as their spousal application is not finalized yet and applicant don’t have valid status just the implied status.
There is a good thing that you can apply for open work permit if your spouse is in Canada along with your spousal PR application.
It’s important to keep your important documents updated such as medical certificates and police certificates and regularly keep in touch with IRCC about the status of the application.