Canada can be a great place to call home. That’s why about 300,000 people immigrate to the country each year. They come for free health care, academic opportunities, and overall high quality of life.
However, the Canadian immigration process can be complicated. Each pathway has numerous stages you need to complete and each of these stages has its own set of acronyms and procedures to learn.
That’s why we’ve put together this article focusing on the IP2 to PPR timeline. Keep reading to learn more about Canada’s Express Entry processing time and for tips on how to ensure your immigration journey goes smoothly.
Applying for permanent residency in Canada through Express Entry
Before diving into the specifics of the IP2 to PPR timeline, let’s quickly review the Express Entry pathway to permanent residency in Canada.
What is Express Entry?
Canada’s Express Entry system is a streamlined immigration pathway for qualified professionals. It’s a point-based system in which the more points you get, the greater your chances are of receiving an ITA (Invitation to Apply for Canadian residency).
Foreign-born professionals can earn points for things like:
- Skills
- Canadian employment status
- Experience
- Provincial nomination status
Canada’s goal with this immigration pathway is to bring more skilled workers into the country to fill in-demand positions.
Canada immigration background check for Express Entry and other PPR application stages
The overall length of the PPR application process is typically between 6 and 12 months. There are four stages to the application process:
- Find out of you’re eligible
- Gather the documents you need to submit your application
- Submit your profile
- Wait to receive an invitation to apply for permanent residency
Once you’ve submitted your application, you’ll receive an AOR for your Express Entry application. AOR stands for Acknowledgement of Receipt and your application will have to go through eight stages before you become a permanent resident:
- Background check: not applicable (NA1)
- Medical passed (MEP)
- Background check in progress (IP1)
- Background check: not applicable (NA2) (this is when your eligibility is checked)
- Background check in progress (IP2)
- Background check: not applicable (NA3) (this stage won’t be seen by many applicants)
- PPR: passport request
- CoPR: confirmation of permanent resident
Most of the processing time of your PR application will be taken by the background check stage of the Express Entry procedure. Further, your application will progress through all of these stages without any input from you. If there comes a point at which you need to provide additional information or answer clarifying questions, Canadian authorities will usually reach out via email to ask for additional information.
What is IP2 and what does it mean about my application?
How does the IP2 stage affect the Canada PR processing time?
IP2 is the stage within the PPR process in which the bulk of your background check is completed, including security checks conducted by CBSA and CSIS. The current IRCC PR processing time for Canada will depend on a wide variety of factors. These factors can come from your personal situation, the state of the world, or even the quantum applications currently being processed by the Canadian authorities. Therefore, this stage can take some time to complete.
IP2 Stage Processing time for PR through Express Entry
The processing time for permanent resident Canada IP2 stage typically falls in the range of 1 and 40 days. However, your IP2 stage could be much longer than that if the background check for your application is more complicated than initially expected.
There are stories of people who have been stuck in IP2 for 3-4 months. This is why it’s important to do everything that you can to make your application as easy as possible for Canadian immigration authorities to review. We’ve included more information on how to do that in a later section.
Processing time for PR after completing the IP2 stage
Once the IP2 stage is completed, Canadian officials will send you an email requesting the information they need to complete your passport request. This typically gets sent out about 7-20 days after the IP2 stage is finished.
After that, you would just need to wait until you get your passports back to move to Canada permanently. This process could take somewhere between 4 and 6 weeks but will vary depending on how busy the passport office is at the time you apply.
How to reduce your Canada Permanent Resident processing time
The PPR process is thorough and it can be frustrating to have to simply wait without being able to do anything to move it along faster.
That’s why it’s worth doing some research before you begin the PPR process to make sure you are as prepared as possible to ensure your application progresses as smoothly––and quickly––as possible.
As you prepare, you may want to keep the following tips in mind:
Read the eligibility requirements carefully
Gathering all of the information that you need to complete your PPR application can be a very time-consuming process. The last thing that you want to have happened after you’ve done that is to find out that you aren’t actually eligible for the program in the first place.
With this in mind, make sure that you read the PPR eligibility requirements carefully before you invest too much energy into this process. An ideal Express Entry candidate may have the following attributes:
- Under 30
- Have at least 2 bachelor’s degrees or a master’s degree
- High-level English or French proficiency
- At least 3 years of skilled work experience
If you check all of these boxes, then there’s a good chance that Express Entry may be a good immigration pathway for you. However, if not, there are plenty of other pathways to permanent residency for you to explore.
Ready all necessary documentation to reduce PR processing time
You will also want to make sure that you have everything necessary to complete your application on hand before submitting it. This will usually include your passport and identification documents, language test results, employment information and job offer, and financial certification.
If you don’t submit all of the required documentation, or the documents you send aren’t adequate or within date, you could encounter unexpected delays in the PPR process. These could potentially add additional weeks of time that you have to wait before being able to reside in Canada permanently.
Before you start your application, be sure to check this list of required documentation for Express Entry.
Max out your points
Canada’s Express Entry immigration pathway is a points-based system. The more points that you get, the better your chances are of receiving an invitation to apply to the program.
That’s why one way to make your journey smoother is to make sure that you get as many points as possible while applying. You can increase the points that you get by:
- Gaining more work experience
- Earning a more advanced degree
- Spending more time working with Canadian companies
- Getting a more robust nomination from the province you want to live in
Completing these steps will earn you more points, which will make it more likely that you get an invitation to apply. And if you’re a very desirable candidate, then chances are that the processing time for your pr application will be expedited. After all, the Canadian immigration authorities would be considerably more motivated to process the application of a highly desirable candidate.
Make sure your identification documents are in date
Identification documents are a really important part of the PPR process. Canadian officials need to be able to verify that you are who you say you are and they use identification documents to do that.
So if your identification documents are old, expired, or due to expire within the next 6 months, you should probably renew them before applying to this immigration program. Doing so will make it much less likely that you encounter any delays related to government officials not being able to verify your identity.
Seek the advice of a professional service
Immigrating to another country can be a challenging and complex process. Even though Canda’s Express Entry program was designed to be a streamlined pathway for immigration, it’s not an easy thing to navigate on your own.
That’s why it’s often worth it to hire a professional service to help you out with the process. Companies that specialize in Canada’s Express Entry pathway can provide you with targeted, personalized guidance and feedback to ensure that your immigration journey goes as smoothly as possible.
That being said, not all professional services are created equal. So make sure that you do some research to zero in on options that have a proven track record of success.
You may need to spend a little extra to partner up with a company that has a good reputation. But doing so is worth it since it could significantly increase your chances of successfully completing the PPR process within a timeline that works for your ambitions.
Partner with Express Entry to simplify the application process and minimize your IRCC PR processing time
Immigrating to Canada could be the best decision of your life. But to complete the process successfully, you need to begin by doing your research. Doing so will help you avoid common pitfalls and simplify the immigration journey for yourself significantly.
That’s why you should check out the Express Entry blog. It’s jam-packed with information about the Express Entry program ranging from the actual procedure and Express Entry timelines to assessment criteria. Browse through some of our previous articles to learn more about the steps that you can take to make immigrating to Canada through Express Entry that little bit easier. And, if you’d benefit from more personalized guidance around your immigration journey, here at Express Entry PR we can help you to take the first step.