Dorna Rahmanian, the Assistant Director of Immigration Program Guidance, spoke on the “COVID-19 Spousal Sponsorship Boom” panel and agreed to respond to a question that many of you posed relating to how best to submit additional documents to support a sponsorship application that was filed with documents missing due to COVID. Here is her response:Please note that the Department continues to accept and process spousal applications. Any new applications that are missing supporting documentation and contain an explanation related to COVID-19 service disruption will be provided with 90 days. Once it is possible to send the missing supporting documentation, we encourage clients to do so as soon as possible to avoid further delays. If the application is still incomplete in 90 days, the Case Processing Centre will request the missing documents with an additional 90-day deadline.
In situations where an acknowledgement of receipt letter has not been received, additional documentation
can be sent via Webform. Clients can provide their name and DOB, and if they have it, a UCI, along with their
submission if they do not have a temporary file #. For applications that do not contain an explanation for
the missing documentation, or the reasons are unrelated to disruption of services associated with impacts
of COVID-19, they may be returned to the applicant as incomplete and not processed.
We understand that some applicants may have just received their incomplete applications back as a result of
processing delays. We can appreciate that this has been a challenging time for clients. IRCC continues to
explore solutions and ways to improve overall processing times and to better serve clients amid the COVID-19
pandemic. At this time, we are returning incomplete applications without a justification related to COVID-19
service disruption as quickly as possible so that applicants are able to re-submit with the missing information.