©Gregory James, January 2007

I don’t suppose anyone would be surprised to learn that the Canadian government sets numerical targets for each visa office.

These targets are broken down into categories such as spousal sponsorship, economic class, and parental sponsorships.  The numerical target set for each visa office determines how many immigrants that office will send to Canada.

As you know, processing in most visa offices can be quite slow.  The targets set have a direct impact on overall processing times.

Obviously, if an office has an objective of processing 1000 files in a year, but receives 2000 new applications, we have a backlog. 

There is a coercive element to this. Regardless of how backlogged a particular visa office might be, the immigration department restricts immigrants choices so that, for example, a person in Jordan has to file their application in Damascus, even though the Damascus office is one of the world’s worst.

I have set out below a chart, showing the top ten visa offices in terms of processing targets.  I have also set out the median processing time for a skilled worker application in each of those offices.

Processing Targets:

Ranking	Visa Offices	Change in Target	Target	Ave. Processing Time in months (Skilled Workers)
1	Buffalo, U.S.A.	-9%	36,075	31
2	New Delhi	-3%	22,380	66
3	Hong Kong	-1%	16,515	60
4	London	+2%	15,910	29
5	Manila	-4%	14,190	62
6	Paris	+13%	13,210	52
7	Damascus	+3%	10,190	63
8	Islamabad	-2%	9,440	58
9	Beijing	-1%	8,590	60
10	Singapore	+11%	8,150	47

I want to thank my colleague Richard Kurland for obtaining and sharing statistics for processing targets.

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