Operational Bulletin 511 – April 17, 2013

Summary

Operational Bulletin 405-B provided guidance on Centralized In-Canada Processing of Private Sponsorship of Refugee sponsorship applications at Centralized Processing Office-Winnipeg (CPO-W).

This Operational Bulletin (OB) provides additional information to OB 405-B. In particular, it stipulates the revised roles and responsibilities regarding:

• Private Sponsorship of Refugees (PSR) Notification of Arrival Transmissions (NATs) for the:
• Local Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC) offices
• NHQ Matching Centre
• Integration Program Management Branch (IPMB) and,
• Visa offices

Issue

Program Officers often deal with Private Sponsorship of Refugee Notification of Arrival Transmissions. Therefore, they also need to be aware of revisions to their roles and responsibilities concerning these Private Sponsorship of Refugee Notification of Arrival Transmissions.

Background

The authorities established the Centralized Processing Office – Winnipeg (CPO-W) in April 2012. This office was to centralise the intake and in-Canada processing of PSR sponsorship applications. The authorities facilitated the PSR centralisation further, by using the Global Case Management System (GCMS). This helped in:

• Streamlining operations and,
• Increasing the processing capacity

Officers use the GCMS for tracking and processing PSR applications currently. This has brought about changes to the way in which Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC) provides Sponsorship Agreement Holders (SAHs). SAHs contain the arrival information about privately sponsored refugees (PSRs).

The New Procedures

The New Procedures for PSR Applications Received at CPO-W on or after April 02, 2012

• The CPO-W would send any NATs for any case they process on or after April 02, 2012 directly from the Matching Centre to the Sponsoring Group (Sponsorship Agreement Holder [SAH], Group of Five [G5] or Community Sponsor [CS])
• This would be the process effective March 11, 2013
• The Matching Centre would copy the applicable local CIC office when they send the NAT notification
• This would notify the local CIC office that they need to issue Interim Federal Health Program (IFHP) coverage for the refugee(s) included in the NAT
• This is in accordance with existing local office procedures

The New Procedures for PSR Applications Received at CPO-W before April 02, 2012

• The Matching Centre would continue to send all NATs for SAH / G5 / CS sponsored cases that the CPO-W processed prior to April 02, 2012 to the applicable local CIC office
• The local CIC office would continue to remain responsible for:
• Disseminating the NAT to the SAH and,
• Issuing coverage to the refugee as per existing local office procedures

SAH NATs

• Officers would use one single e-mail address for all GCMS-generated CIC correspondence with each SAH
• This would be inclusive of NAT notifications
• Officers would inform SAHs of their responsibilities for disseminating NAT information:
• Within their organisation and / or,
• To their Constituent Groups (CGs) if applicable
• The IPMB bears the responsibility for entering and updating the primary e-mail address for each SAH in the GCMS
• The Matching Centre would need to notify the IPMB for taking appropriate action, if the Matching Centre:
• Receives an error message or,
• Receives a bounced message

G5 and CS NATs

• The Matching Centre would send the G5 and CS NATs from the Matching Centre to the Group Representative
• The Group Representative bears the responsibility for disseminating the NAT information within their respective group

New Visa Office Procedures

NAT notifications often have an urgent nature. Therefore, it becomes imperative for the Matching Centre to identify the sponsoring organisation to which they need to send the NAT. In many cases, the Matching Centre would need to do this at the time they receive the notification from the visa office.

The visa office would need to check the GCMS for PSR cases processed in the GCMS. The officers would need to ensure that the application has a SAH / G5 / CS associated with it. If the SAH / G5 / CS is not associated with the application, officers would need to make this association by updating the GCMS (if necessary). Only after this, would the officers be able to send the NAT to the Matching Centre.

The visa office would need to send a NAT via an e-mail to the Matching Centre. The e-mail would include the sponsor details, as per usual practice. The visa office would do this for all PSR cases processed in CAIPS.

New Local CIC Office Procedures

Local CIC officers would need to pay special attention to:

• The NATs they receive and,
• The NATs that others copy them on

If the Matching Centre sends the NAT directly to the local CIC office, then the local CIC office would need to:

• Forward the NAT to the respective sponsor and,
• Issue the IFHP coverage for the refugee(s) included in the NAT

This is in accordance with existing local office procedures.

If other officers copy the local CIC office on the NAT, then the local CIC office would need to:

• Only issue the IFHP coverage for the refugee(s) included in the NAT

The other officers would already have notified the sponsors. This is in accordance with existing local office procedures.

The local CIC office would also need to initiate the Resettlement Assistance Program (RAP) income support. They would need to initiate this for the Visa Office Referred (VOR) cases. This is as per the guidelines stated in OB 512.

Source: Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC)