Extremely short visa stamping timeline for outland spousal PR application
My wife’s passport arrived at IRCC’s office in Warsaw yesterday after she received a passport request from IRCC for visa stamping. She originally dropped her passport to VFS Almaty on April 28th and it left Almaty on the next day. This morning she received a message from VFS Almaty that says:
“Decision envelope for your application, tracking ID No. *********** has been dispatched from IRCC Office to Almaty OC on Thu May 07 2026. Please note that this is an automated email. Please do not reply to this email. Regards, VFS Global”
We were expecting the visa stamping to take 2-4 weeks (as I’ve been reading for most cases) or a week (in extremely lucky cases).
We are extremely confused, nervous and positive (all in one) as to how the passport got dispatched so quickly back to the VFS office in Almaty.
Anyone experience such a quick turn around like this with their IRCC passport stamping? What should we make of this? We were somewhat worried but at the same time we keep reminding ourselves that she did get an email a while back from IRCC about “we need your passport to complete your permanent residency” etc.
Her online application status on IRCC still shows “In Progress” and not “Approved”. I am not sure when the status changes online. Shouldn’t it be updated to “Completed” or “Approved”, if it was stamped and dispatched?
We are now just waiting for the passport to arrive back to Almaty (which seems will take a few days judging by how long it took to reach Warsaw from Almaty) to see if the passport has actually been stamped that quick or what.