r/stuckcanadians

I’m at 147 days…or roughly 5x the IRCC’s “standard legislative timeframe.”

Arrived London Consulate 16th Sept
Arrived Canada 28th October
AOR 28th November
In Process 7th Feb

When I see they are working on the June/July lot now is that from In Processing, received or AOR?

Thanks

Crossposting -

1. We received your application for a citizenship certificate (proof of Canadian citizenship) on July 28, 2025.
2. We sent you correspondence acknowledging receipt of your application(s) on July 30, 2025.
3. We started processing your application on August 1, 2025.
4. We sent you a letter on August 13, 2026. Please consider delays in mail delivery before contacting us.

I was just checking my daughter's tracker, like you do every day even when you try to quit, and I saw this! They didn't actually email! But I was able to download her certificate. This is such a weight off my mind.

I got mine in January but her app never moved. We had the MP contact them about a month ago, and I have no idea if that's what finally got things moving, but I'll take it! I'm so glad!

Edit to add: She is G5 and I am G4. No previous generations are alive. G0 was post-confederation.

Another edit: Monday morning Aug 17 and still no email! I'm glad I checked the tracker or we would have no idea it was approved!

As we enjoy the dog days of summer, and as IRCC seems to be slowly opening the approval tap, and those of us stuck in PSU purgatory look forward to eventual parole, I am mindful there are many folks who are just starting out and doing their searches ahead of preparing their apps (as well as some who have already submitted who may want to look again for documents they had to work around. The following is offered in that light.

As most folks aren’t likely to have a full paper trail of genealogical records going back to their G0 conveniently at hand, I thought I would share my thoughts based on my own experience in searching family history (oddly not for my G0 because, LoL, we actually had a complete paper trail).

There are so many different archives and databases and searching tools I don’t propose specific tips for any of them, but instead offer some generic ways to hopefully make your breakthrough to finding something elusive!

I don’t pretend that my list is comprehensive but the following tips did, among other things, help me:

- confirm the actual family membership of the older sister of one of my paternal ggfs (as her DC listed up her parents as being different than his (after researching adjacent and below her, I found the parental names in her DC were somehow the parents of the wife of one of her sons, who had the same given name Elizabeth, her son George must have been out of sorts when reporting the death of his mother and gave the wrong parental info.);

- find the DC of my paternal ggm in the Michigan archives (as the transcription from the hand written DC into the database botched the family name).

Practical suggestions for your search:

- when doing an INITIAL search, more can be less (in time spent), so put in everything that you think you correctly know in the search. If your ancestor appears you are quickly done!

But there are so many gaps and errors in historical documentation that are only added to by manual and AI transcription of vintage records into search databases that you may have to take a less direct and more creative approach:

- as opposed to my initial comment, now, less may be more (in things found), so don’t over constrain your search by filling in every variable. 

- based on the source of birth year, consider that they may have been born before the year you were given. (My G0 had a 3 year span of birth years, as mentioned, I didn’t need to search her records, but if I had been searching, and had strictly constrained by using one of the later years and only searched years after I may have found nothing). 

- consider contemporaneous (and AI generated index) misspellings as I have seen many of these in different source docs and archives. (Some ancestors had very simple 5 and 6 letter names, and they fell victim to transcription errors. I had assumed nobody could have messed that up, but I was wrong, and I missed finding her DC until I tried other methods below).

- if you can use a wild card delimiter like a * try to do that, e.g. instead of Banks, try Ba*.

- similarly because a minimum constraint, wildcard delimited, search will return lots of hits, play with adding another constraint, adding in, scanning results, then removing, then adding in a different one, to see if this method helps you narrow the results. (also risks missing your result if your constraint doesn't match the DB value, so beware).

- to vet what you think you know, move laterally (to siblings info) and vertically (through earlier and later generations). (This was how I confirmed the wrong surname in Elizabeth's DC mentioned above, because the DC's of her children, even George's, correctly reported her surname.)

- in the aforementioned unfindable DC due to a spelling error in the Michigan database, I found it through a combination of parental given names. I was prepared to filter that by looking at the output county names but didn’t have to because an initial scroll thru the score or so results, her given names popped out.

- I’ve noticed (a lot) that in olden times, people often didn’t die where they lived, they often died at relatives homes in nearby counties, on the other side of the state, even across the border in a different state.

- as noted above examples, if I hadn’t departed from over constraining my searches, and made use of combining seemingly minor variables, I’d have not found numerous documents.

I hope this is helpful to somebody.

Good luck!

ps feel free to add your useful tips in the replies.

ETA:
- preamble.
- amazing, 5k views in the 1st 48 hours and no comments? Given I was hoping other's might share their "pro tips" for the benefit of the community, that's kinda disappointing.

https://www.canada.ca/en/immigration-refugees-citizenship/services/application/check-processing-times.html

Spoiler: it's grim. My cohort (Aug 2025) had their estimate increase.

I requested my notes on June 21, 2026, and they arrived today- August 6, 2026.

That’s better than I was expecting.

The notes confirm I’m in PSU (G2 app submitted April 2025). I was scanning and don’t remember seeing any section where they said I was notified, but there was a lot in the notes I didn’t totally understand.

Anyway, thought I’d share this timing. 🇨🇦

Hi again.

I tried to post this last week, but for some reason Reddit told me it didn’t make it past the filters… so trying again for informational purposes. 🙂

>>>>>>

Hi all! So I’m in Canada right now, and (with this trip planned) I’ve been looking forward to dialing the “only from Canada” IRCC phone number.

I’ve tried from my mobile, and the system did not recognize my phone as being in Canada or something.

So I asked for help dialing out of the hotel, and got that info. Yesterday I tried mid-morning and got a message about a high volume of calls, then I got disconnected. Okay, no worries, I’ll try back.

Today, super-ready, I called just when the clock rolled over to 8AM (when the line opens). By 8:04 I had gone through all the menus, received the same “high volume”-type message and was disconnected again.

I believe there is very little chance that the lines are overflowed 4 minutes into the day, so now I’m just disappointed and discouraged to call again. I think if I get to the “proof of citizenship” option it’s going to hang up on me every time.

The hotel phone buttons have a slight delay between pushing them and working, so it’s kind of a challenge to make it through all the menu selections.

I was so excited to visit and call for assistance (that’s not WHY we are here, but I expected a different outcome).. and now more disappointment.

I think waiting is all we really can do at this point. Gahhhh.

[AOR May 1, 2025]