So, you have submitted your Canada visa application but you don’t know whether or not IRCC received it? Well that’s where the Acknowledgment of Receipt (AOR) letter comes. Once the Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) receives your visa application and opens to process it, IRCC will send you an AOR letter. Sometimes, it might send you an email for the same.
The overall purpose of sending an Acknowledgement of Receipt (AOR) letter is to inform the visa applicant that their application has been received, opened and is now being processed by the immigration department.
Why have we been mentioning the “receiving” and “opening” of the application differently? That’s because IRCC sometimes opens applications at different times than when it received the application. The reasons behind this may be:
- high number of applications being received
- technical issues that may prevent IRCC from processing applications
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When does IRCC begin processing an application?
IRCC first of all receives your application, then opens it to make sure:
- the visa application is complete
- no information or documentation is missing
- the fee receipt is with the application
- the visa application was submitted at right time, meaning before its immigration pathway was shut down, or paused
Once all of these criteria are cleared out, IRCC will send an AOR letter or email to the visa applicant to notify them that the visa application has been received. Since IRCC has made sure that the documents are all present, it will begin processing your application.
How long does AOR take in Canada?
There may be a slight difference between the time when the application is received by IRCC and when it opens the application. The immigration department will only send the Acknowledgement of Receipt (AOR) letter once it opens the application. In any case, IRCC still won’t take more than a few days to open the application.
What happens if I send an incomplete application to IRCC?
If you have sent an application that:
- is incomplete
- is missing documents
- does not have the payment receipt attached to it
IRCC might reject your application in such cases and you would need to restart the whole process again. Hence, it is absolutely necessary that you submit a completed visa application only.
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