Speaker 1: Hi everybody and welcome to our channel. I wanted to make a quick video today about processing times. I've done a few videos about this before but lately we've been getting a lot of calls from clients, from potential clients and new inquiries asking us why is my application taking so long, is the pandemic the reason behind it, I want to hire a new lawyer, I might want to hire your firm because my current representative, I don't feel my representative is doing anything and I need somebody to expedite the application. So, in response to this, what we say is, well, first of all, it depends. It depends which category it is. It also depends on when you filed, how you filed, if your application is complete, and what are kind of the steps that you're at in the process. Just because you hire a new lawyer doesn't necessarily mean that the file is going to process faster. It doesn't mean that your representative is doing anything wrong. Now, it could be that maybe your representative is not following up when he or she should, but it could also be that your lawyer or your immigration consultant is doing everything correct and it's just because there's backlogs. Most of the time there's backlogs, most of the time it's taking a long time just because there's not enough employees in immigration to process all of the hundreds of applications that are coming in all the time at the different offices, at the different embassies. But obviously a big reason for a lot of delays is the pandemic. It has halted a lot of different areas in immigration. Some areas are processing very fast. Certain areas have now gone online. So we see that it's being actually done quite quickly. But other types of application, like for example, visitor visas, it's taking a long time. We have certain files, visitor visas, super visas that we filed over a year, a year and a half ago, and we don't hear back anything. follow up, we email, and we get the automated responses and it just says your file is in queue. Other files such as spousal sponsorship for example, they were taking a long time when the pandemic first started. Now we're seeing that it's back on the processing time is what is posted on the IRCC website, but there are certain cases that just take a little bit longer and some of them get processed very fast. So it really depends of which region is processing. Sometimes it has sometimes none of these factors apply either. It's really random what's happening. So my recommendation is to always look on the website and see what the processing time is. Then make sure that you've submitted a complete application. Make sure that if you get correspondence, you respond promptly that it's complete. If you have to send it in by physical mail, make sure you submit it by FedEx and you keep a tracking number. Make sure that you're always checking your emails and your spam and your mail at home that so that you don't miss anything. If you have a lawyer and you feel that it's going, a lawyer or immigration consultant, and you feel that it's taking a long time, then contact your representative and say that look this is what it says online, this is what you told me in the beginning, what's happening? Is it because there's something wrong? Often in immigration, in the immigration world, what I feel is that people need to feel a sense of safety and they need to know that either something's happening or everything is okay and what I've noticed in the beginning when I would start practice when I started practicing and clients would ask me a lot of questions about processing time I would write back and you know kind of like dry the processing time is this and you know there's nothing I can do about it and over the years what I've learned is that people are emotional immigration is emotional and this is about people's lives and it matters. And what I do and what I've trained my coordinators to do is to get on the phone with clients. If there's a client who emails me or one of my team members and says, you know, I'm really stressed and what's happening? We don't just write back this and that, we told you this, we told you that. Even though we have, you know, a processing email that we send and we say that, you know, no news is not bad news and all that stuff. It doesn't help clients. So what we do is we get on the phone and we say, look, okay, let me look at what happened. Let me look at where we're at. Kind of do a review with the client. Kind of also, you know, talk to the, we talk to the client and say, okay, like what's happening in your life now? Okay, you're waiting for your spouse or you're waiting for your mother. What's the difficulty? Is there something that we can take and in the update, submit it to immigration? Maybe that's gonna make a difference because life happens, things happen. The pandemic's still unfolding. A lot of difficult things are happening in the world. And sometimes after not talking to a client for a few months and we get on the phone and we say, oh, okay, your situation has changed now. so why don't we send the letter and kind of push a little bit more, you know? But if nothing has changed and it's in the processing time, I still like to talk to the client and explain what's behind it, and that's important. And almost every single time that I do that, the clients, we hang up the phone, and the client feels better, and we feel good that, you know, we were able to be a sounding board and answer those questions. Because the area of law, what we do, it's human. Everything is about people. It's about people's lives and everything matters, you know, so we really try to Treat the files as if what if we were in this situation, right? So so that's my recommendation So just make sure you've you've done your due diligence in terms of filing your application properly If you have a lawyer representative call them ask them questions It's your right to do that If you feel that your your representative is not kind of doing extra stuff that you will like of course you could do a consultation with us you can call us and we can look at the situation and say you know what I think our experience shows that maybe we can do this or that or we could say no actually there's nothing you can do maybe if you reach at this point you can contact us and then there's if things are going for a very long time which exceeds a reasonable processing time there are two things that we can do we can send the letter it's called a request to expedite and we can say that if you do not make a decision within 30 days, we will go to federal court and file what's called a mandamus request. It's basically an application we do at the federal court to force IRCC to make a decision. Now, we do this only in exceptional circumstances. The file has to be complete. It has to be processing way past the processing time, just because it says one year on the website. At the 12-month first day we file an application, No, it's more like, okay, it's been now like a year and a half or two years and we're following up and we're not hearing anything. Then we might consider going to federal court and often, again, it's not 100% sure it's going to work, but in our experience, most of the time, it has worked. So we file this application and we usually get a consent from the Department of Justice saying, okay, we're going to contact whichever office it is to try to see what's going on because sometimes a file, not that it's necessarily lost, but it might kind of have lost track or maybe there's been officers or supervisors in an office that have changed and something is making the file, it's halted. But this is really a last resort. We really keep that as a last resort because federal courts are one of the highest courts in Canada. It's not easy to win applications there and it's also very expensive in terms of legal fees. So we really keep that at the end and before that, we have a methodology where we follow up. So when I say follow up, what do we do? We send web forms, we send cover letters. If that doesn't work, we might send a FedEx letter. We call, calling IRCC makes, we get a lot done that way. I mean, you as the client can call IRCC too and you should do that to follow up on your case if you're not represented. But if you're represented, your lawyer can call on your behalf and we do that a lot and we follow on, not every agent is always able to give us all the information but a lot of the agents will go that extra mile, will look in the file and they can even send an internal message to an officer and depending on the information we receive then we write a cover letter and say we called IRCC, we did this, we did that in the last six months, nothing has happened, now we need this and we put it in bold. So we have all these little techniques and tricks that we do to follow up but it's done in a specific way not to kind of like harass immigration because you know the goal is not to just bombard officers and supervisors and not aggressivity and things like that is not gonna go very far it's it's a very nuanced way and a diplomatic way to communicate with agencies we're professionals dealing with professionals so if you have concerns about processing time it's you should always advise your representative and we have ways to follow up and if you're not represented then you can take the tips of this video call send a letter, make sure everything is complete, and then if you really see that you're struggling, then we recommend you contact an immigration expert to see if anything else can be done to process your application faster. If you have any questions about processing times or if you're in a bit of a situation with your file and you need our help, don't hesitate to contact us.