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Paper-based PR application: what members learned waiting for their AOR

Canada • Permanent Resident • immigration 0 views
By VisaBuddies Communityvia community — compiled from public visa forums

Documents Needed

  • Acknowledgement of Receipt (AOR)

    The first confirmation IRCC sends after a paper-based PR application; nothing moves until it arrives.

Step-by-Step

Historical note: this thread reflects the 2021–22 paper-based PR backlog; current processing is faster and mostly online.

Applicants who filed paper-based PR applications compared their waits and drew a few practical conclusions:

  1. Expect roughly 12 months to AOR. The pattern members observed was that IRCC issued the Acknowledgement of Receipt about a year after the paper file was received. One applicant had waited since January 2021, another since November 2021 — both still within that window.

  2. Calling IRCC before your AOR is largely futile. One member tried calling 10+ times a day and never got through. Another pointed out the deeper problem: before an AOR is issued, call-centre agents typically can't even find the application in the system, so a successful call wouldn't help anyway.

  3. Save the phone calls for after AOR. The consensus was to wait until the AOR arrives, then follow up if things stall — at that point your file exists in the system and agents can actually look it up.

Dos, Don'ts & Tips

  • Don't: Don't burn hours calling IRCC before you have an AOR — agents can't locate paper files that haven't been entered into the system yet.
  • Tip: During the 2021–22 backlog, paper-based PR applicants typically waited about 12 months just for the AOR. Check current IRCC processing times rather than assuming this still applies.

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