Apply for citizenship: Urgent processing

The current processing time for citizenship is 8 months. If your situation is urgent and you need your citizenship sooner, you may apply for urgent processing.

We can only process citizenship applications urgently in exceptional cases, for example if you

need Canadian citizenship to
- apply for a job
- avoid losing your job
need to travel because of death or serious illness in your family and you can’t get a passport in your current nationality
receive a successful Federal Court decision on an appeal on a previous application for citizenship

We check every request to make sure we can process it urgently.

Even if your application qualifies as an exceptional case, we may not be able to process your request urgently.
If we process your request urgently, we may not be able to do it in time to help your situation.
If your application doesn’t qualify as an exceptional case, we’ll process it normally.

If you haven’t sent us your application:

Download and print the application package you need
Complete the application
- answer all the questions
Write an explanation of why you need urgent processing
- include any documents that will support your explanation
In your envelope, include your:
- application
- explanation
- photographs
- fee payment
- required documents
Write “Request Urgent Processing – Grant of Citizenship” in large, dark letters on the envelope
Mail your application to the address in the instruction guide

If you have already sent your application and now need urgent processing:

Fill out the Web form explaining why you need urgent processing and include:

your full name, date of birth, email address and telephone numbers
your UCI or application number
any documents that will support your explanation
- files must in PDF, JPEG, TIFF, DOC, or DOCX format
- files must be 2 MB or smaller
- if you include multiple files, the total size must be 3.5 MB or smaller
- help for how to reduce file size