Please give me your inputs about this letter. It addresses a completely different request to the prime minister
June 9th, 2017
Re: request for family support for Canadian Citizen sponsors waiting for outland spouse sponsorship more than a year (example Ankara office more than 1.5 times normal processing time, more than 15 months since Feb 2016)
Dear The Right Honorable Justin Trudeau, Prime Minister,
We are more than 30 educated and professional Canadian Citizens/PRs (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 more than 1.5 times the normal processing time and more than a year.
The Ankara office and office of the immigration minister confirmed that they conduct background checks by working together with partner agencies such as RCMP, CSIS, CBSA, medical authorities and agencies of foreign governments. Background screening processes are non-discriminatory and universal in their application (although Ankara is the only VO passing the normal processing time based on the statistics). Any delays or requirements that their partner agencies may require in providing input are something over which they have no control. And also it says in the IRCC website that they’ve committed to processing most (80 %) of the applications by end of Dec 2017. We process the applications in the order we get them. So basically no deadline for our applications as we fall out of 80%. And despite all their efforts and announcements to unite families there is no clear horizon in front of any of us as for the time to start our family.
Most of us are working as professionals/business owners in Canada for so many years and we are largely contributing to the Canada success and as single individuals working hard we are contributing large amount (5 digits) of tax to Canada. It took us a lot of years of hard working to reach where we are standing in our career now and got professional designations and work for large Canadian companies. Most of these companies don’t have any branch in the world and are pure Canadian so we have no option to transfer. As young professionals most of us are only entitled to 2-3 weeks of vacations so during the last year we could only be with our spouse for 2-3 weeks in a year. Our spouse does not have any way to come to Canada while waiting for security check to be concluded as visitor visa is hardly granted as well (ideally there should be a spouse supervisa similar to the parent supervisa which was introduced couple of years ago but we leave this matter to the immigration minister's office).
Here we are all asking for some kind of support to be added for families in this situation in the Canadian work system by law. Canada has paternity, maternity, caregiver leave, etc. We want to make sure the sponsor can temporarily take off from work and stay with her/his spouse for 6 months or 1 year (partially paid for couple of months or even without pay) and not losing her/his job and being able to prove to IRCC that he/she can still sponsor her/his spouse financially once they both move to Canada. The requests for this leave to start maximum one year after the sponsorship application and not any longer. This situation has put our family and career life in danger. Currently most companies don’t grant such leave for their employees. Husband and wife need each other as much as a dad and baby do, etc (specially newly married couples). We believe the current system may bring discriminations against Canadians marrying non-Canadians by putting their family and career life at risk and it is specially discrimination against females as they have age limitation to bring babies and expand their family and they cannot even start a family and unite with their spouse for more than a year. This is while they continue to contribute tax for others to be able to use the child benefits, free schools, etc for many years.
Thank you for your time and concern.
Here is my personal file # and details and my MP contact
File #
Sponsor:
Applicant:
UCI#
Marilyn Gladu, MP, Sarnia, ON
And the list of some of the 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
Geng Tan, MP, Toronto, ON (2 constituents)
Ali Ehsassi, Canadian/Iranian MP, North York, ON
Majid Jowhari, Canadian/Iranian MP, Richmond Hill, ON
Alexandre Boulerice, MP, Montreal, QC
Helene Laverdiere, MP, Montreal, QC
Terry Duguid, MP, Manitoba, MB
Thomas Mulcair, MP, leader of NDP, Ottawa, ON
Kennedy Stewart, MP, Burnaby, BC
Jonathan Wilkinson, MP, North Vancouver, BC
Thanks & Regards,
