Return of Fees for Certain Federal Skilled Worker Applications

See also:

• Cessation of processing of FSW applications

Processing of certain applications made under the Federal Skilled Worker (FSW) program prior to February 27, 2008, is to cease effective June 29, 2012, and fees paid to Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC) in respect of the affected applications are to be returned to the person who paid them as required by law.

Overview

NHQ - Finance will be implementing a phased approach to the return of fees for terminated FSW applications.

First priority will be given to those applicants who respond to the general notice on the CIC website as affected by the terminating provision of the Act, and who submit the Return of Processing Fee, Right of Permanent Residence Fee or Right of Landing Fee form and provide contact information as directed. NHQ - Finance will subsequently follow up with all affected applicants to confirm contact information in advance of issuing fee returns.

In order to facilitate the compilation of data required by NHQ - Finance to initiate the return of fees, visa offices are to take the actions outlined below.

Unsuccessful applicants who had paid the Right of Permanent Residence Fee (RPRF) will continue to be entitled to a return of that fee in accordance with existing procedures.

Returning fees paid to CIC

The process of returning fees paid to CIC in concert with the termination of affected applications will be centralized at NHQ - Finance in consultation with visa offices as required.

Fee returns and communications with affected applicants will be initiated by CIC in due course.

The basis for the amounts to be refunded will be the POS+ data at missions. NHQ - Finance will communicate with affected missions in due course to provide further instructions on the extraction of required data. The POS+ data will subsequently be matched with the eligible cases extracted from CAIPS/GCMS and will form the baseline data for the purpose of returning fees to the payee.

NHQ - Finance will communicate with eligible applicants in due course to confirm contact and payee information prior to initiating any return of fees paid to CIC, and will allow a reasonable period of time for applicants to respond. In cases where no response to any initial and any follow-up communications is received, applications are still terminated, but action may still be taken at a future date to return fees to the person who paid them.

Fee returns will be issued in the appropriate currency for the country in which the person who paid them resides, using the daily exchange conversion rate in effect on the date of issuance.

Unsuccessful applicants who had paid the Right of Permanent Residence Fee (RPRF) will continue to be entitled to a return of that fee in accordance with existing procedures.