Repatriate Me!

On facebook a friend posted this article Couple survive immigration ordeal which details an extrememly close call on one couple losing their visa and $1000 fee because CIC screwed up and sent the application to the wrong address.

Jonathan Muller said his Colombian wife, Sandra Camargo, got a temporary visa last January and her application for permanent residency in Canada was accepted in November.
But the immigration acceptance papers only arrived on Jan. 5, two days before Camargo’s visa was set to expire.

Your visa will expire 1 year from the date of your medical exam which is required before you can even submit your paperwork. Even better they were sent to Montreal and not Colombia where they were needed.

“There’s no way you can call somebody and say, ‘Look, can you extend this by 30 days?’ “ Muller said. “You can’t talk to somebody and if you do, nobody can do anything.”

this is very true. Immigration web site is not well designed and there is really no way to contact anyone. Also, once your paper work has been received immigration sends you a snail mail letter with your application id and notice to NOT contact them about anything. How do I know this, not because I’ve received that paper, but because another one of my friends has.

In any case I’m a little stressed out about this situation because we procrastinated on submitting our application until the maximum processing time is just before our planned time to leave. Who knows what will happen.

Reading the comments to this story shows a lot of people who are not happy with the completely hands off approach that the Canadian government takes to this.

Here’s a quote from a commenter that I agree with

Canada Immigration workers set up things so that it is near impossible to speak with anyone, it is a serious bureaucratic cluster****! There is no help and no one give’s a @#$%, that is your government.