Provincial immigration applicants in Canada see soaring processing times. They say the system is unfair

Wait times have almost doubled in the last year, putting lives in limbo and hurting a program meant to settle economic immigrants outside big cities.

For the sake of Canadian permanent residence, Lovedeep Sangha has given up job promotion opportunities. He has delayed buying a house and starting a family.

The Toronto software engineer who came from India could have taken a higher position in his company or changed jobs, but that would require updates to his pending immigration application, complicating the process and likely causing further delays.

Since he filed his application to the Immigration Department in March 2024, the processing time for his program has almost doubled to 21 months from 11 months.

Sangha is among many economic immigrants selected and nominated by individual provinces for permanent residence, who are caught up in processing delays; that’s largely because the federal government cut the number of new permanent residents for 2025 by 25 per cent to 395,000 and reduced it further in the next two years.

The provincial immigration nomination program was one of the biggest casualties, with its allocated spaces halved to 55,000 in 2025, 2026 and 2027. 

Apart from putting newcomers’ lives in limbo, it was a big blow for a program whose aim is to settle economic immigrants outside of Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver to places where their skills are needed.

The federal cuts are “one of the factors that’s suppressing the issuance of the actual PR (permanent residence) and the increase of the processing times,” said Calgary immigration lawyer Mark Holthe, on behalf of the Canadian Immigration Lawyers Association.

Beginning in the late 1990s, the provinces reached deals with Ottawa and started their respective nomination programs to recruit immigrants for local workforce needs. (Quebec has had its own special agreement to select its own immigrants.)

Applicants are screened and then referred to the federal Immigration Department for permanent residence processing. Newcomers are to remain in the province that nominate them.

The current delay in processing provincial immigration applications is only affecting nominees who apply under the “non-express entry” streams, which are not prioritized by federal officials.

Sangha, who came here in 2022 and works in IT for a petroleum company, said it’s unfair that he has to wait 21 months for processing when it takes just seven months for those in the express entry streams.

“With the U.S. tariffs happening, if I get laid off, without my job, I would have to start (the application) from scratch again,” said the 28-year-old, who is nominated by Ontario through a job offer by his employer. He is an organizer of an online petition asking Immigration Minister Rachel Bendayan to fast-track their applications.

He said applicants fear there would be further delays as Ottawa is letting go 3,300 people or 20 per cent of its immigration staff, while struggling with two million permanent and temporary immigration applications, including 842,600 for permanent residence like his as of the end of February.

Renish Keshwani, who came in 2021 from India for a diploma program in financial services at Centennial College, said only select provincial streams are fast-tracked under express entry, and it was predetermined by the provinces and Ottawa.

He said applicants have no say in the route they take, yet they pay the same application fee — $1,525 — whether they receive express processing or not.

“Why is there such disparity?” asked the 24-year-old, who moved to Regina for a job as a financial adviser and received his nomination by Saskatchewan last May.

“I can’t change my employer or even positions. My mother has been very sick for two years but I’m afraid to leave (the country) and go see her.”

Holthe said there’s “no practical difference” in processing these provincial immigration applications and the disparity is classic bureaucracy.

In 2015, Ottawa rolled out the express entry mechanism to manage economic immigration applications with a mandate to process them within six months. Provinces didn’t want to be left out and asked to have some of their provincial immigration streams fast-tracked.

Before the provincial nominee programs’ non-express entry applications went online, “they were paper-based,” said Holthe. “There were not mechanisms in place to process those PR applications online in an expedited fashion, so they had to basically pick the winners and the losers in terms of timing.”

With fewer provincial immigration spots and a mandate to prioritize express entry applications, he said the only dial officials can turn down is the other provincial nominees, to allocate fewer spots and slow them down.

Sufyan Tahir came here from Pakistan in 2018 to pursue a doctoral degree in biology at Western University.

He’s frustrated that his road to permanent residence is getting even longer now. With his pending application, he can’t look for opportunities outside Ontario, which nominated his immigration.

“I’m 36,” said Tahir, who graduated in 2023 and worked as a researcher for a government agency until December, when his contract was not renewed. “I feel like I’m wasting my time.”

Ottawa said processing times for non-express entry nominees fluctuate based on the volume of applications because the system does not have “same intake controls” and is not subject to the six-month processing standards. 

“Provinces and territories have more flexibility in requirements of non-Express Entry streams, which can target a wider variety of skill sets and types of candidates to address their specific regional labour needs,” said the Immigration Department, adding that provinces determine where their streams fit between the express and non-express systems.

Haoyang Li moved to Whitehorse from Toronto a year after he finished his undergraduate studies in economics at York University in 2021 because it’s less competitive to get a nomination from Yukon. 

He applied for a job in a bank but it wouldn’t support his provincial immigration application. Instead, he found a clerical job at a grocery store that put forward his nomination for permanent residence.

The 27-year-old from China said he feels insecure with his temporary work permit amid Canada’s rapidly changing immigration rules.

“I planned to change my job after (I got) my permanent residence,” he said. “But now I do not know.” 

-The Star