7 years of suffering for waiting for my citizenship; can someone help me please

[luckychai]

I also asked her whether she believes the IRCC went out of line. Had the IRCC abused the power? Had the IRCC abused the system?


She said “yes” in my case the IRCC really went out of line and they had abused their power and the system. And, they tried to make up the excuses to cover their butt.

She tried to encourage me not to be worried because I have met all the requirements to become a Canadian citizen and I have zero prohibitions. By law, the IRCC shall grant the citizenship to me. Her statements were very powerful and it gave me such hope courage to go on with my life.

____________________________________________________________________________


This is the letter I sent to the citizenship judge.


To whom it may concern; or to the citizenship judge (his name)


My name is ………….. and my client ID number is ……….. I just received the travel history from CBSA and it supports my statement and my physical residence in Canada during the relevant period of time.

During the hearing on December 14, 2016, you showed me the stamps on the photocopies of my passport and you asked me what the trips were for. The stamps that appear on the photocopies of my passport that (the name of the person) made were from my actual passport (immigration official in Halifax who interviewed me after the test).

And you can see from the report, I first arrived in Canada in Vancouver Airport March 29, 2005. This is the exact claim that I submitted on the citizenship application. Then the second of my entries was Feb 24, 2009, the date I returned to Canada with my Canadian common law partner from USA. You asked me what the trip was for, and I gave you the exact same answer that I just mentioned above. You also showed me the stamp from February 16, 2009, by American border. This was the date I left Canada for America. The CBSA only showed the date of entry because the exit information didn't exist until June 30, 2013.


The third of my entries was from March 5, 2010, the return trip from USA. I left Canada around January 2010. This is irrelevant because it happened after I submitted the citizenship application. The relevant period of time is November 11, 2005- November 11, 2009.


Anyway, if you calculate from Feb 16, 2009 to Feb 24, 2009, it will be a total of 8 days exactly that I claimed on my declaration.

However, there was one stamp on my passport around May 2008 from US immigration, and there was no stamp on my entry back in Canada because it was a one day trip from the Canadian Niagara Falls to the American side of Niagara Falls. When I returned to Canada on the same day, I just presented my passport and my PR Card. The immigration official didn't stamp anything on my passport. As you know, a one day trip wasn't counted otherwise the record would show this on the travel history of my entry to Canada in May, 2008.


My declaration and my travel history record support one another. Along with this, my bank statement that showed my payroll and the activities for which I withdrew money, my record of the employment, my health card used, T4 tax filing, were all coherent. Everything holds up together in my favor regarding my resident questionnaire.

Yours truly,

(My name)



____________________________________________________________________________


****** I will come back to write more maybe tomorrow or in few days **********

 

[Lawrence137]

Congrats!
Lucky, after reading your story, i hope some directors can read you story and film a moive named 《 I am a Canadian》or something like that. You experience is educational . I will give you all my best wishes. Well done!

 

[ChippyBoy]

It sounds to me as though someone's taken a personal dislike to you somewhere along the way and is deliberately trying to delay things in such a way that you not fulfilling your PR residency requirement might then allow them to technically kill-off your citizenship application. If I were you, I'd immediately hire a tough-talking gutsy immigration lawyer to act for you. It's one thing to be legally entitled to apply for citizenship, but quite another when it comes to the undeniable existence of historical & ongoing prejudices and bigotries which can affect real bureaucrats who hold your application and future in their hands. Hire a good strong vigorous and ruthless Canadian immigration lawyer, and good luck to you.

 

[luckychai]

It sounds to me as though someone's taken a personal dislike to you somewhere along the way and is deliberately trying to delay things in such a way that you not fulfilling your PR residency requirement might then allow them to technically kill-off your citizenship application. If I were you, I'd immediately hire a tough-talking gutsy immigration lawyer to act for you. It's one thing to be legally entitled to apply for citizenship, but quite another when it comes to the undeniable existence of historical & ongoing prejudices and bigotries which can affect real bureaucrats who hold your application and future in their hands. Hire a good strong vigorous and ruthless Canadian immigration lawyer, and good luck to you.

OMG, Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you and thank you. You are the first one to say this and I couldn't agree more with you.


Quote " It sounds to me as though someone's taken a personal dislike to you somewhere along the way and is deliberately trying to delay things in such a way that you not fulfilling your PR residency requirement might then allow them to technically kill-off your citizenship application. "

I have been waiting to hear something like this for a long time. And, that was exactly I believe it happened. I will make an outline conclusion after I finish my story.

Thanks

 

[luckychai]

As I mentioned before, legally the citizenship judge had 60 days in his time frame and he took 59 days to finally make the decision. I look at the ecas on that day (Friday) and I saw the decision made on the status. OMG, I exclaimed quietly because the status had been frozen for 7 years. On Monday I called the IRCC and the representative told me everything was fine. I asked her the specific question whether it was approved or not. She told me she was not allowed to give me that answer, but she gave me kind of a hint that my file looked great and everything was in order. She said that I had to wait for the letter.



In about another two weeks, I called again and this time it was a male representative on the phone. He told me to wait for a moment and he came back to congratulate me. He said my citizenship file was granted and it had been transferred to ceremony department already. I was extremely excited and delighted in the same time. The only thing he couldn’t tell me was when I would be receive the oath letter. I thanked him a lot before I hung up. I immediately informed my lawyer through e-mail and asked her to write a letter to local IRCC to speed up the ceremony date.


She said that I need a strong reason to request speeding the process which I had. At that time my father was quite sick and he was in his eighties and I wanted to go back to my birth country to visit him. I also had and still have some mental health issues caused by such delay from IRCC. I also had my mental health record from the ministry of health. I used to call the telehealth over the phone expressed my depression and some others mental issues and they had the record which they sent it to me for my request.


My lawyer had enclosed the evidence in the letter and wrote many reasons why they should speed up the oath ceremony. I read the copy of the letter which she asked the local IRCC to response to her within 15 days. There was no response from them and we decided to wait for another 15 days. And there was still no news from them. She also advised me to ask my MP to contact the IRCC to help in speeding the process which I did.

I also called the IRCC so many times to find out; and the specific last time that made me ballistic.

She told me there was no time frame for oath ceremony invitation; it could be weeks or years. I asked her “Are you sure about years” ? and she said "yes". When I heard that sentence; it reminded me when they told me there was no time frame limit for checking my background check.

What about if they wait for another 2-3 years to send me a letter? What about if something happened to me such as I couldn't deal with my depression anymore and I kill myself? Then, I would never become a Canadian citizen. At least, I want to be called and be proud to be a Canadian citizen before I die.


You know what, I told myself I am not going to deal with this kind of shenanigans anymore.


I set up the appointment with my lawyer one more time. As soon as I entered to her office; the first thing she said was “I am very angry with the IRCC right now”. She told me there was no response at all whatsoever regarding her letter. At least the IRCC should have a courtesy to respond to her letter, she added. At least said something to let us know what’s going on rather than ignore us. I told her I can’t wait for years for the oath ceremony.

It was a serious look on her face before she said “I really don’t know why the IRCC is doing this to you”. She said she had a feeling the oath letter will eventually come, it could be next week or next month. She didn’t believe it was going to be years, but who knows. So it’s up to me if I want to file the second mandamus for speeding the process. She said it would be another fee which I understood. I believe I mentioned the second mandamus to her first. She said if the money wasn't an issue for me then I could do it. I immediately told her go for it.

At that time, I was under a lot of pressure and stress so I would be more than happy to give her anything in order to get the oath letter as soon as possible. My lawyer is a very nice and considerate person anyway. She charged me only 500 ( five hundred dollars) for the second mandamus.

By the way, my lawyer called off the first mandamus right around the citizenship judge hearing. So we had to file the second mandamus. Unbelievable............and I mean it un........believable from the IRCC.

******** I will try to come back tomorrow or in few days to finish my story******

 

[Seym]

Awesome news.
Congrats in advance, fellow canadian citizen

You absolutely deserve the citizenship and I hope your oath ceremony comes ASAP!

Good luck and thank you for the time you took to expose your situation in this forum.

 

[FloydCan]

I do believe citizenship here was granted reluctantly and that's why it took so long. I think they were putting everything under the microscope.This was particularly evident in the judge's remark about credibility. Anyway, it's all behind you now. All the best.

 

[luckychai]

Awesome news.
Congrats in advance, fellow canadian citizen

You absolutely deserve the citizenship and I hope your oath ceremony comes ASAP!

Good luck and thank you for the time you took to expose your situation in this forum.

I am a Canadian citizen now. I took the oath ceremony in May 2017.

 

[luckychai]

I do believe citizenship here was granted reluctantly and that's why it took so long. I think they were putting everything under the microscope.This was particularly evident in the judge's remark about credibility. Anyway, it's all behind you now. All the best.

Thanks

 

[Seym]

I am a Canadian citizen now. I took the oath ceremony in May 2017.

Oh okay ! Well deserved

 

[faithfulcanadian]

You know what? Now I think about it, 5 years to investigate a visa refusal is NOT outside of the realm of possibility, especially around the time of your application. IRCC (called CIC back then) had a lot of citizenship applications stuck for years for various reasons. Most of them got RQ'd but there are other strange reasons. I had a co-worker a couple of years ago who had his citizenship application stuck for almost 4 years and counting. He said he got test and interview very soon, like within a year, but then they ask him to translate something in his passport, and his application became "non-routine" and stuck there every since! I left that company so I don't know if he's still stuck or not! A visa refusal should be more complex to investigate than a simple translation, so with the way they worked back then it was possible to take years. Note that it's not just CSIS that would investigate this for security, CIC would also investigate for physical residence and chance of misrepresentation. Fortunately nowadays they work better on preventing applications from stuck for that long.

I understand you face many challenges in life due to your sexual orientation. But sometimes that makes you very sensitive to things that are actually not there. Canada is a very open and tolerant country and its government treats everyone equally. It's possible that your citizenship officer disliked your life style thus questioned your credibility, which caused further investigation. Back then they were inefficient processing "non-routine" applications and many of them fell through the cracks and got stuck. But that in no way shows any discrimination against any group of people. Everyone could of gotten stuck if they were unlucky.

That single officer's view, if there WAS a sentiment against you, was against CIC and the Canadian government's policy. It's understandable that you feel the judge's scrutinization came from, again, resentment to your life style, but that may not actually be the case. As a judge that's what he's supposed to do and you did have an usual case, even that's totally caused by CIC's incompetence. In the end, he did rule in your favor, didn't he? Some of the detail you provided, like him not knowing you can become PR without leaving Canada, is normal as I feel - you can be an expert in a field, but that doesn't mean you remember every single detail. Most people would become PR by leaving the country (or flagpolling), and that's most cases the judge had been dealing with.

I hope you'll be at peace with this outcome. It's unfortunate you had to go through all this but there are some things in life that you can't do anything about. At least they're supposed to have a better system now, so cases like yours will hopeful not happen.

What a long-winded BS!!!, but then again, you are entitlled to your opinion, I honestly do not think you believe in these stuff you wrote.

Luckychai was obviously intentionally targeted by bigots within IRCC, if you have been following his story, people who would go to any extent possible to deny others of their dreams & hapiness, people who have no regards or respect for the straight-forward policies & procedures when dealing with citizenship applications, why?, just because they can do it!, just because they are powerful, just because they do not like this man, his credibility was attacked just because of who he is, period!!!

Yet, you have the guts to come in here and proclaim your idiocy, the Canadian constitution includes in itself a charter of rights and freedom, which was written based on entrenching equal rights of all citizens regardless of race, gender or creed, the bitter truth is this; some of the bureaucrats enforcing these laws are just full of bias.

Maybe if you put yourself in luckychai's shoes for a moment, you may see things differently, but the reality is this, you & I will never know what a horrid experience this man went through. If I were you, I would completely refrain from such statement saying he is "sensitive to things that are not there".

So far, in his story there is nothing like resentments towards any IRCC officer or citizenship judge, he is simply telling his story, so why don't you give the man a chance to finish his narratives, before jumping into conclusion?, and before you attack me, to let me know I have no clue what I'm talking about, I have been following his story since September 26, 2016, from immigration.ca, thats 2 years!, I don't think he is overreacting in any way......Peace!

 

[dpenabill]

Luckychai was obviously intentionally targeted by bigots within IRCC, if you have been following his story, people who would go to any extent possible to deny others of their dreams & hapiness, people who have no regards or respect for the straight-forward policies & procedures when dealing with citizenship applications, why?, just because they can do it!, just because they are powerful, just because they do not like this man, his credibility was attacked just because of who he is, period!!!

Thing is, this is so totally contrary to the overwhelming mountain of evidence of how IRCC otherwise deals with applicants, it is impossible to know what the actual situation is, let alone why.

The odds are very, very high there is another side to the story.

In general, while there are occasional instances in which unacceptable discrimination or bias inappropriately affects the processing and even outcome in an individual case, what really is obvious is that this is highly unusual, probably rare or even extremely rare. The majority of actions taken in processing an application are FACT-BASED, CRITERIA-DRIVEN, done by stranger-bureaucrats with large workloads operating under pressing timelines, with a focus on details of the case for which most prohibited-discrimination elements are neither relevant nor readily apparent, at least not beyond very broad categories (like the applicant's home nationality) which, if a processing agent is exercising discrimination in regards to that would quickly be noticed and would have an impact on scores of applicants, a phenomena which is simply not seen and most likely is NOT happening.

It should be remembered that apart from the prohibited forms of discrimination, there are many, many legitimate and mandatory reasons to discriminate or at least escalate the level of scrutiny. Obviously, the process specifically discriminates on the basis of criminality, for example, and is required by law to so discriminate.

I am not commenting on the OP's situation. From the posts I cannot form an opinion about what is actually going on and thus I have no observations to make about it.

But again, the accusation that there is obvious targeting by bigots involved is CONTRARY to what we know about how IRCC handles the vast, vast majority of citizenship applicants.

 

[jamie hito]

Thing is, this is so totally contrary to the overwhelming mountain of evidence of how IRCC otherwise deals with applicants, it is impossible to know what the actual situation is, let alone why.

The odds are very, very high there is another side to the story.

In general, while there are occasional instances in which unacceptable discrimination or bias inappropriately affects the processing and even outcome in an individual case, what really is obvious is that this is highly unusual, probably rare or even extremely rare. The majority of actions taken in processing an application are FACT-BASED, CRITERIA-DRIVEN, done by stranger-bureaucrats with large workloads operating under pressing timelines, with a focus on details of the case for which most prohibited-discrimination elements are neither relevant nor readily apparent, at least not beyond very broad categories (like the applicant's home nationality) which, if a processing agent is exercising discrimination in regards to that would quickly be noticed and would have an impact on scores of applicants, a phenomena which is simply not seen and most likely is NOT happening.

It should be remembered that apart from the prohibited forms of discrimination, there are many, many legitimate and mandatory reasons to discriminate or at least escalate the level of scrutiny. Obviously, the process specifically discriminates on the basis of criminality, for example, and is required by law to so discriminate.

I am not commenting on the OP's situation. From the posts I cannot form an opinion about what is actually going on and thus I have no observations to make about it.

But again, the accusation that there is obvious targeting by bigots involved is CONTRARY to what we know about how IRCC handles the vast, vast majority of citizenship applicants.

Pardon me.

You are correct about an employee discriminating an applicant based on gender, creed or race which are contrary to what the law stipulates on citizenship approvals; would be noticed and dealt with upto termination and indictment.

None will outright exercise bigotry.
I can discriminate my subordinate by shoving his vacation application under the table, or make excuses I’m busy every time he or she approach me.
In IRCC’s case, bury you till everyone forgets the fact.

But then again, we cannot know for sure OP’s ordeal because we did not see both sides of the coin.

 

[h3a3j6]

I will add two pieces of info from my personal application and experience.

Incompetence:

I have physical proof for this one, a letter sent by IRCC to me full of grammatical mistakes.

I also received no less than 4 requests to send a copy of my PR card while processing an application. Yes, 4 times in a 12-18 months span.... As if the card will magically change shape, color or God knows what during this period.

I also made several ATIP requests (some of them to piss them off, other to cross-check information which paid off as in one instance, they forgot to hide/clear officer comments... Some of the comments clearly indicate lack of focus).

What accelerated my application was my persistence and my MP's follow-up. I was lucky to have a great support staff at the MP's office that called IRCC every other week to follow up on my case. They can't evade these people like they can easily dismiss us.

So, I apologize, maybe for the bulk of the applicants, IRCC was "correct". In my case, they weren't.

 

[ZingyDNA]

Come on, you said I'm entitled to my opinion then called it "idiocy"? So everyone is an idiot until they agree with you, huh? Fortunately I don't think the same way as you!

The fact is I just can't draw some of the conclusions that the OP drew, just like neither my former coworker nor me discussed discrimination when he got stuck for years (he's from a middle eastern country, with a certain religious faith as well, if you know what I mean). Incompetence? Sure, not surprising from CIC. Discrimination? Nope!

What a long-winded BS!!!, but then again, you are entitlled to your opinion, I honestly do not think you believe in these stuff you wrote.

Luckychai was obviously intentionally targeted by bigots within IRCC, if you have been following his story, people who would go to any extent possible to deny others of their dreams & hapiness, people who have no regards or respect for the straight-forward policies & procedures when dealing with citizenship applications, why?, just because they can do it!, just because they are powerful, just because they do not like this man, his credibility was attacked just because of who he is, period!!!

Yet, you have the guts to come in here and proclaim your idiocy, the Canadian constitution includes in itself a charter of rights and freedom, which was written based on entrenching equal rights of all citizens regardless of race, gender or creed, the bitter truth is this; some of the bureaucrats enforcing these laws are just full of bias.

Maybe if you put yourself in luckychai's shoes for a moment, you may see things differently, but the reality is this, you & I will never know what a horrid experience this man went through. If I were you, I would completely refrain from such statement saying he is "sensitive to things that are not there".

So far, in his story there is nothing like resentments towards any IRCC officer or citizenship judge, he is simply telling his story, so why don't you give the man a chance to finish his narratives, before jumping into conclusion?, and before you attack me, to let me know I have no clue what I'm talking about, I have been following his story since September 26, 2016, from immigration.ca, thats 2 years!, I don't think he is overreacting in any way......Peace!