Informal Request for ATI Records Previously Released

Organization: Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada

Year: 2022

Month: May

Request Number: 1A-2022-00123

Request Summary: I would like to receive details about how the IRCC is handling the growing backlog of Citizenship applications. How many citizenship applications are there, how many were processed so far in 2022? How many of them are paper vs. online applications? Why did the processing time from application submission to acknowledgment of receipt has gone down from approximately 5 months to 5 weeks recently, but the citizenship application grant processing estimate was just increased from 12 months to 27 weeks? How is the IRCC able to send acknowledgments of receipts within 5 weeks if there is a 27 month backlog of applications that are waiting for a decision? In addition, there are many data points on the internet from people who applied for citizenship proving that applicants who send their applications by paper are receiving their applications processed months faster than people who submitted their application online. Sometimes paper applicants who did NOT even apply for urgent processing are getting their background verification completed within a few days of acknowledgment of receipt while online applications are waiting months without any progress at all. Why is the IRCC prioritizing paper applications over online applications when the whole point of online applications was to reduce processing times?

Disposition: All disclosed

Number of pages: 9

Date modified: