Canada Must have a Standard Time for Study Permit Processing

Canadian visa offices through out the world processing the applications for study permits have different processing times ranging from one week to 16 weeks as per Citizenship and Immigration Canada website. However,  in many cases the actual time of Canada study permit application processing is higher than 16 weeks such as in Canada visa office in Islamabad, Pakistan.

Canada offers an education system that is one of the best in the world. Students all around the world wishing to pursue their higher studies at world class educational institutions are choosing Canada for studies abroad because of the following three reasons:

1. Lower Tuition Fees
2. Employment Opportunities
3. Permanent Residence Possibilities

The students applying for study permit prefer their applications get processed in timely manner with minimum processing times. Australia and United Kingdom are very efficient in processing the applications for study visa to enter and commence education courses as per their set standards of processing times.

However, Canada does not have such processing times standards in place that will ensure that visa officers do not take unnecessarily long processing times on study permit applications. Canada only provide an indicative processing times at various visa offices taken to process visa applications in the past.

The lack of such processing time standards is evident from the fact that applicants are waiting for 8-9 years to get their application processed. Citizenship and Immigration Minister Mr. Jason Kenney had to use legislation in a bid to wipe off the huge backlog of about 300,000 applications.

Canada Federal Court judge though has ordered Citizenship and Immigration Canada to process the application which were supposed to be eliminated through law. The Federal court judge ruled that it is the obligation of Canadian government to process the application within a reasonable time frame.

Canada must introduce a standard of processing times at all visa office locations so that applications for study permits can be processed with minimum delays. If Canada does not act to reduce the processing times, students waiting in long visa applications queue will then turn to other countries where the processing times are favorable for students.

Tags: Canada, Canada immigration, Canada Study visa, foreign education, Foreign Students, international students, Study abroad, Study in Canada, Study visa