Please let me know your ideas about this letter:
June 5th, 2017
Re: spouse sponsorship living outside Canada – Ankara Visa Office- 1.5 times normal processing , more than a year
Dear Honorable David Johnston,Governor General,
Thank you for visiting western Canada and University of Alberta. As my sister had the opportunity to meet with you as the winner of the fountain design competition for the new university building you are opening during your visit, I thought to pass this important message to you through her.
We are more than 30 educated and professional Canadian Citizens/PR (mostly women and mostly Iranians) sponsoring our spouses to come to Canada under the family sponsorship program to start our family life. The citizens/residents of Turkey, Iran, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Jordan are assigned to the Canadian visa office in Ankara, Turkey. The normal processing time as mentioned on the Immigration, Refugee, Citizenship Canada website is 8 months for Iran. We all have passed the normal processing time and our spouse applications have been in background check/security screening for 7-8 months despite the fact that they all have passed the criminality and have no criminal records. And our total processing/waiting time is so far 1.5 times the normal processing time and more than a year.
As you know professionals especially young professionals and students in Canada are only entitled to 2-3 weeks of vacation in a year and in order to keep showing we can undertake the sponsorship duties we have to keep our job in Canada. So this has caused most of us only to be able to live with our spouse for a maximum 2-3 weeks with within a year. Most of us are working for Canadian companies/universities and don't have an option to get a transfer to another branch either and we keep contributing to the Canada's success by all means.
We have already approached our member of parliaments and sent emails to the minister of immigration office and the Prime Minister but the Prime Minister office forwarded our emails to the minister of immigration and the MPs and minister's office replied back to us that as the files are in security check it is out of their control.
We understand it is important for Canada to check everyone completely but there should be a deadline for CSIS and other agencies to get back to IRCC about the background check in a timely manner. Also there is an immigration rule for giving a visitor visa to someone with a dual intent. If security check is taking so long our spouses should at least be able to get a visitor visa to let us live together. But the officers are asking for proof of property and large investment in the residency country to make sure the applicant will go back after the visitor visa expiry and reject the applications without these documents. But being young professionals we still don’t have a property neither in Canada nor in any other country (especially considering there is no mortgage available like Canada in other countries). But our spouse has a genuine dual intent and if the PR will not be issued at the end we all have to go out of Canada including the Canadian/PR sponsoring spouse.
We appreciate if you can follow up and contact the minister and Ankara's consul.
Here is my personal file # and details and my MP contact
Marilyn Gladu, MP, Ontario
And the list of MP’s who have similar constituents applying to sponsor a spouse living outside Canada via the Ankara visa office (for privacy reason I am only disclosing the MP names but the MPs have the file# and details of the applicants)
Honorable Ahmed D. Hussen MP, Minister of Immigration
Majid Jowhari, Canadian/Iranian MP, Richmond Hill
Alexandre Boulerice, MP, Montreal
Helene Laverdiere, MP, Montreal
Terry Duguid, MP, Manitoba
Tan Geng, MP, Toronto
Thomas Mulcair, MP, leader of NDP, Ottawa