What Happens After You Get an ITA
Receiving an Invitation to Apply is a milestone, not the finish line. Here's what the application window looks like and what to have ready in advance.
The clock starts immediately
An Invitation to Apply (ITA) means IRCC has selected your profile from the pool — it is not itself a decision on your permanent residence application. From the moment you receive it, there is a firm, limited window to submit a complete application, and that window is generally not extended for individual circumstances.
What the complete application requires
- Police certificates from every country you've lived in for a certain minimum duration since a certain age — these can take weeks to months to obtain from some jurisdictions, so starting early matters
- A medical exam from an IRCC-approved panel physician, which itself needs to be scheduled and can have a wait
- Final, unexpired language test results and ECA, if not already on file and still valid
- Digital photos meeting IRCC specifications, and all supporting documents formatted per the application checklist
Why preparing in advance matters
Because the post-ITA window is fixed and short relative to how long some of these documents take to obtain, the applicants who move smoothly through this stage are almost always the ones who requested police certificates and scheduled medical exams proactively — sometimes even before receiving an ITA, once their CRS score put them in a realistic invitation range. Waiting until the ITA arrives to start gathering documents is one of the more common, avoidable sources of a missed deadline.
After submission
Once the complete application is submitted, it enters IRCC's processing queue, and additional document requests (a procedural fairness letter, updated police certificates, or biometrics) can still arise. Processing time targets are published by IRCC and change periodically — Mahyar will walk through the current target and what to expect at each stage during your assessment, and can help make sure the initial submission is complete enough to minimize follow-up requests.
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