Assalamualaikum folks,
A friend of mine got in touch with the media regarding the ridiculously long spousal visa processing times at CHC-Islamabad. He got a positive response from CBC, who have assigned the renowned journalist Muhammad Lila to this potential story. Muhammad got in touch with my friend and asked him if he could get a number of people who're going through this ordeal and set up a meeting with him. So far there are three of us who are taking the lead on this initiative, but obviously, having a larger group of people will send a much stronger message i.e. the delays are not isolated, but widespread.
I should add a disclaimer that this would most likely NOT affect our cases in a positive way since most of us are a year or more into the process anyway and the process won't change overnight. But the hope is, inshaAllah, that this will bring the issue to light and hopefully prompt the ministry to take action to improve the process for future cases.
So, I'm looking for people who might be interested in taking part in this initiative -- preferably those from the GTA area, but others are welcome too. What we're planning to do is to gather a decent-sized group and set up a meeting with Muhammad Lila in a couple of weeks. I see this forum as the perfect place to get this kind of support. Although I'm a relatively new "member", I've been following this thread for a while now and am impressed by people's attitude and resolve.
If you're interested, please send me an email at m @ hameeds.net (I still haven't figured out the Inbox thing here) with your name and rough location. Once we have a few people, we'll get in touch with Muhammad and try to organize the meeting. We're hoping to get around 20 - 30 people inshaAllah.
If you have any questions or concerns, please let me know. I look forward to hearing from you.
JazakumUllah khair,
Wassalamualaikum
Muhammad Ali Hameed