 Hi everybody and welcome to our channel. Today I wanted to make a video on spousal sponsorships. I haven't done one in a very long time and I noticed that the videos I do on spousal sponsorship are always the most popular with the most views and questions and also a lot of the inquiries we get at the office about spousal sponsorship and we do handle a lot of spousal sponsorships at the office. So this video is just to talk about a little bit of the changes that has happened since I made the last videos and what's kind of currently happening with processing of these applications. So one major change that has happened is that the requirements for mandatory relationship documents have changed. So for example now if you submit an application whether it's an overseas or an inland, depending on your situation if you're married, if you're common law, this is your first marriage, if you have children or not and if you are living together or not you need to demonstrate certain that you have certain key documentations. For example it might be mandatory to show that you have one or two or three of certain documentations. For example it could be joint bank accounts, joint utility bills, it could be official government documentation that you're getting at the same address such as Notice of Assessment. You might also need to provide joint ownership or joint lease agreement and if you don't have those then you might be able to supplement with reference letters or photos. Now sometimes it's difficult to get these documents because for example we have some clients that have been in a relationship for a very long time, they live together but they don't have joint utilities, they don't have joint bank accounts because they just never thought of doing that because there was never a need for it. So in those cases if you're really unable to have those documents and that's something that you really don't want to do you don't want to have a joint bank account and that's okay as a couple you can choose to do what you want. You might never want to have a joint bank account it doesn't mean that you're not a real relationship it's just a decision as a couple that you've taken then what we could do is we write in our legal submission letter which is our cover letter the reason why you don't have some of the documentation that is allowed, it is indicated in the document checklist that if you're unable to provide certain documents to provide an explanation obviously we try our best not to do that because we don't we never want to give an opportunity to immigration to scrutinize your application or refuse your application or delay your application we really try to put everything that they want so that it just fast fast processing smooth processing but if you're really really unable to get certain documents you just don't have them at all then of course we provide an explanation and we have done that in a lot of our application and it's usually been pretty okay so no problem there. Another big change for spousal sponsorship is the processing time whereas before there was more files which were processed like a year a year and a half it was always a little bit more than a year immigration made this policy where they really wanted to process all applications within 12 months they posted on their website and it's also currently posted and I find that they're actually are meeting these timelines which is fantastic we have a lot of our applications that are processed I would say on average in our office about six to eight months uh sometimes 10 months but more like six to eight months and sometimes we're even very lucky like for example today we had a file get finalized in like four months which is really fantastic but I would never say if we do a consultation that all your files and we can do this we're going to get it in four months I always still tell our clients it's about a year it's about six months to 12 months but it could always say it could even be 14 months 15 months or if we're lucky it could be five months or six months this has remained the same it always depends on the officer it always depends on the backlog and the processing time it's really a question of how many employees are working at an immigration at immigration and how often are they processing files it's not a question of your file is lost or there's something wrong with your file or it's going to be refused it's just processing times vary and they vary from country to country so that advice always stays the same we hope for the best but we're prepared for the worst so when we file an application we make sure it's perfect we have a good cover letter a good submission letter the forms are perfect we reviewed everything to make sure that there's no gaps there's no signature missing important information is there there's no misrepresentation we make sure that the supporting documents are complete that the document checklist is complete we always send our application with FedEx to make sure it gets there on time that we have a tracking number we always make sure that when we get the correspondence we reply to it as soon as possible that we're on top of everything that if we don't we're not sure of something we have our you know myself or my staff we call the call center and follow up so if you do all of these things hopefully it will be as smooth and as fast as possible but having said that sometimes you could do everything perfectly and it could even be still longer so ultimately the important thing is that your application is approved yes it's important that your application gets approved fast but we want an approval we don't want a refusal and we don't want complications so keep that in mind if you're considering filing for as follow sponsorship application other changes besides that I think that's that's more or less the biggest change that happened the last little while since I made the videos my recommendations remain the same that if you have a complex case make sure that you speak to an immigration lawyer make sure that you you know anything about criminality previous refusals previous relationship previous sponsorship you explain everything to your lawyer if you have a straightforward file you can file by yourself there's a lot of information out there on on IRCC on various blogs and websites on our website on my youtube channel I give a lot of free information on how to file it yourself and there's a lot of people that do file it themselves and there's no problem but if you are somebody that you don't like paperwork and you get overwhelmed spousal sponsorship can be very overwhelming I would recommend that you hire a law firm to help you out a legal expert because legal experts in immigration this is what we do day in and day out we know exactly what we have to do and if we don't know what we have to do then we have the tools to research with our colleagues we ask questions and figure it out we call immigration because the spousal sponsorship is a very important process it could be very stressful if you're sponsoring your partner especially if your partner is not with you in Canada and is abroad you might be separate for a long time and if you have children it's even more complicated so you want to make sure that when you embark in this journey you have everything prepared in your favor so that if anything unexpected happens you have the tools to deal with it if you have any questions about spousal sponsorship you can send us an email contact us and we'd be happy to help you with that application thank you