Once you receive an ITA, your MyCIC account will show additional tabs that will allow you to continue with your e-APR. As mentioned earlier, you have 60 days to respond to your ITA. In this article, we will discuss the steps after receiving ITA. With Express Entry, the final submission of the application is now done electronically and is commonly referred to as e-APR (electronic Application for Permanent Residence).
Collect Post ITA Documents (e-APR)
A lot of information that you need to submit in your e-APR will be pre-populated from your Express Entry profile. In addition to the information already provided in the EE profile, you will be required to fill in additional information regarding your family members, work history, travel history, personal history and address history.
A single applicant will likely be able to finish Express Entry e-APR forms in roughly 3-5 hours if all information and dates are readily available. This is also dependent on the number of entries related to family members, work history, travel history, personal history and address history.
Once all the forms are completed, a personalized post-ITA document checklist is generated. As mentioned earlier, the personalized checklist is dynamic and some of the entries in the list change based on the information that you have provided in the previous sections of e-APR e.g work experience letters. You don’t have to complete the process in one sitting. You can save and return later based on your Canada ITA validity.
When you have gathered all documents required after receiving the ITA document checklist that was requested in your personalized document list, you should upload them using the “upload file” tab on your Document checklist page. Note that the document upload section comes towards the end of the e-APR submission process and allows for only 1 file to be uploaded for each section. So if you have multiple documents that pertain to the same section, then you should scan and merge your documents into 1 file. The file formats you can upload are .tiff, .jpg, .doc, .docx and .pdf. The maximum file size restriction is 4 MB. There are tons of free sources to convert, merge and compress PDFs.
Error while uploading documents: Our Online Services Are Currently Down
Many users in the past have reported technical problems when they try to upload documents in MyCIC. In most cases, the issues are temporary and should be resolved in 24-48 hours. If you continue to face similar problems then try the following:
- Verify if there is indeed a large-scale technical problem with MyCIC. You should be able to find scheduled maintenance or system issues notices on MyCIC homepages or IRCCs Twitter account. If there is indeed a technical issue and a resolution ETA available, then you should wait for the systems to be up again.
- Try different browsers
- Try clearing up your cookies and cache
- If the above does not solve the problem then take Screenshots of your problem and try the “Report a technical issue” form or the “Case Specific Enquiry (CSE)” form depending on whether you faced the issue before or after you submitted your online application. If you have not yet submitted your application then use the “Report a technical issue” button. You will find this button at the top corner of your MyCIC account page.
If you have already submitted your application then you can submit a “Case Specific Enquiry“.
Apart from reporting technical issues, you can also use the Case-Specific Enquiry link for other communications as well. For example, change in information such as an address, births, deaths, marriages, divorces, adoptions, changes in employment, change of representative or urgent requests.
*** Tip: If your situation involves uploading documents within a deadline and you are extremely close to the deadline then you can attach the document in question via a Case-Specific Enquiry. Make sure that you add all supporting screenshots and an explanation on why you chose to provide documents via CSE (webform) rather than a dedicated upload placeholder in MyCIC. You must also note that uploading documents through CSE does not guarantee that the said document will be accepted. It is at the discretion of the visa officer.
AOR to PPR
Once you have uploaded all requested documents required after receiving ITA, the system will take you to pages related to Declaration, Disclosure and Electronic signature. “Agree” to the Declaration, Disclosure and Electronic signature pages and you will see a table with a summary of fees that you need to pay for your e-APR. You can pay your fees using Visa, American Express or Mastercard credit card.
Your payment completion is the final step in your e-APR. Your payment reference number and confirmation of online application transmission will be sent to you as a notification (message) in your MyCIC account (Notification title “Confirmation of Online Application Transmission” ).
Depending on case to case IRCC will send another notification (within a few hours to a few days) titled “Acknowledgement of receipt – Application for permanent residence -” which serves as a confirmation that your application for permanent residence in Canada was received by Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada(IRCC) and they have created a file with your application number. This is more popularly called as AOR date and is the date from when your 6 months intended processing time begins. After AOR, IRCC will continue to process different steps related to your application. These steps include Medicals Checks, Background Checks, Additional Documents requests, Interview requests etc. You will receive status updates (most of the time there’s also an email notification) on your MyCIC account whenever there is a step update/completion on your application.
Once your application is submitted you can regularly track Canada visa status by logging into your MyCIC account. IRCC aims to process most of the completed applications within 6 months of receiving a completed application (see below for last year’s processing times).
You can check official IRCC processing times in the link below to determine if your application has crossed the standard processing time :
After your AOR you must report any significant change to your circumstances to IRCC, especially :
- Change in circumstances such as the loss of a job offer or a Provincial or Territorial nomination;
- Change in family composition including newborn children, adopted children, divorce, marriage etc;
- Change of address, including change of e-mail address;
- Change of immigration representative;
- Request to withdraw your application;
IRCC will check and verify the information that you have provided in your application. Steps after receiving ITA include your program eligibility, CRS scores, medical checks, police certificates, work experience, ECA, educational history, language scores, settlement funds, your personal history etc. You will be notified via MyCIC if IRCC needs any additional information or if your application is updated. If everything in your application satisfies IRCC officers, then you will receive a “Passport request” (commonly called PPR) notification in your MyCIC which essentially is a request for your passport to be Stamped with your Canadian PR visa.
Congratulations!!! And all the best for your new Canadian adventure 😀