Students planning to travel to Canada as international students are suffering from student visa delays
“The worst student visa delay we’ve seen in Canada was five-plus months, with visa delays resulting in stressful experiences for students.”
Stakeholders have indicated that visa processing times are fairly even regardless of where students are applying from.
“For Canada, the processing times for international student permits have more than doubled over the past year and have tripled since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic,” co-founder and CEO of Cialfo Rohan Pasari added.
“Instead of the standard 60 days, students from some regions are experiencing delays of more than 200 days. At the same time, the rejection rate for Canada is far too high.”
Sushil Sukhwani, director of Edwise International, noted that Canada’s Student Direct Stream has been recommended and encouraged.
While processing for SDS usually takes four to six weeks, Sukhwani warned that for fall 2022 visas have taken approximately 12 weeks to process.
“Interestingly the general (non-SDS) student visa process earlier took 12 weeks and presently took an average of six weeks,” he added.
“This delay has also resulted in several high-quality student applications being rejected without due review and consideration. We have several students who were going for degree programs at top universities with scholarships being refused visas.”
Students who have not received visas in time are being forced to defer to start dates, he continued.
“However most programs at most institutions for January 2023 are full and similarly several for May 2023 are full,” he said.
“There are circumstances of some programs not being commenced in January or May 2023 resulting in the student needing to delay for a year.”
Visa processing problem for France, the US and the UK are less severe than Canada, Germany and Australia.