I have sent this to minister immigration at
Minister@cic.gc.ca
If you agree, you can do it as well. It’ll take less than a minute in copy paste.
RE: Proposal Regarding Counting Whole Time Spent In Canada by Inland Applicants Towards Citizenship Residency Requirements
Dear Sean Fraser,
I congratulate you on becoming the Minister for Immgration and wish you success. No doubt it’s the most challenging time for IRCC.
I am sure you’re already aware of the huge backlog of PR applications by now and are working hard to find ways to clear it out ASAP. One worst hit category is the inland FSW/PNP/CEC applicants who have been waiting for over a year now while the recent applicants from 2021 (mostly CEC) have started receiving PRs within 2-4 months.
This unjust last in first out policy has caused a sense of exclusion and unfair treatment among the inland applicants who have been waiting for more than a year (some even 2years). And their feelings are not unfounded as IRCC has been telling them it’s Covid-19 that has disrupted their operations but at the same time there’s no explanation about how the applications submitted since February 2021 are being processed in one third of the normal processing time.
Being such an inland applicant, I don’t see at this point of time IRCC can make much difference. Even if IRCC finalises all our applications before Christmas, it will not compensate for the depression that we along with our families have been through. Believe me you can’t imagine what we are going through.
However, there’s one small step that’s under your purview and that can give us some relief once our applications are approved. I am talking about the residency requirements for PR to qualify for citizenship. It’s 1095 days and for the inland applicants the time period they have already spent in canada is half counted towards that requirement but there is a maximum cap of 365 days. It means if I have spent 4 years, I will only get benefit of 2 years as half counted for one year.
It would be further unjust with us if our time spent in canada is not completely counted while we were waiting for our PR cases to be approved by IRCC and IRCC was busy approving 2021 applications but putting our applications on hold or slowly processing them.
I hope as Minister Immigration you’ll take out some time and look into this proposal which is totally doable to provide us some relief as a sign of Liberal Party’s commitments towards immigration and just policies.
Regards.