mesobob

I was going to ask, what exactly is approval in principle. How do the immigration officers get to the point of declaring AIP? What is done to attain this?

anitsirK

My understanding is that it basically means that they've flipped through the application, it looks complete, they believe that the relationship is genuine, and they agree that the Canadian is eligible to sponsor their spouse. What they haven't done is approved the application for permanent residency.

An expert can correct me if I'm wrong, but I think Approval in Principle on an inside application is basically the equivalent of Approval to Sponsor on an outside application (the part that gets processed in Mississauga).