Canada's immigration minister now projects it will take a few months longer than originally hoped to get application wait times back on track.
Sean Fraser promised in January to eliminate backlogs caused by the COVID-19 pandemic by the end of the year.
That was before Canada launched a major response to the refugee crisis sparked by Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
Frasier says that effort has contributed to longer waits for people who want to come to Canada.
As of the end of July, about 1.3-million immigration applications have taken longer to process than the government's service standards dictate.
That's just over half of all the pending applications in the system.
Fraser says his department may need a few extra months before all immigration streams are back to normal processing times.
Critics say that's little comfort to people whose applications have languished for months or even years.