Hi everyone,
My wife and I have been following this forum since our application was transferred to Damascus on March 1, 2011, and it has been a great blessing to us.
We are now waiting while it is being processed in Amman.
Here is a one-page letter I sent to the Minister of Immigration, Jason Kenney, last week. I hope it will be of help to everyone, and it's something others could send him as well, and you don't even need a stamp to send it.
Ottawa Office: 325 East Block
House of Commons
Ottawa, ON K1A 0A6
Dear the Rt. Hon. Minister Jason Kenney,
I am writing to you to request your urgent attention to the spousal class sponsorship processing situation for Damascus applicants who have had their files transferred to Ankara, Beirut and Amman since the closing of the Damascus Embassy on January 31, 2012, and to the 80% processing time that increased from 9 to 14 months from the start of 2011 to 2012.
I am a Canadian citizen and I sponsored my Jordanian wife in January 2011, and her file was transferred to Damascus on March 1, 2011, and it will be 13 months of processing time by April 1, 2012.
After nine months of waiting, I had my local MP -- your colleague, Peter Braid -- get involved, and his office has been providing excellent service given the limited transparency that even they are able to obtain.
We have been active followers of an online forum at canadavisa.com, and want to echo the sentiments of most on there who have been waiting over a year, in that we anticipate you will work for more transparency in the system, and make the processing times reasonably consistent among the various offices in the interests of being fair to all applicants, regardless of national origin.
It is extremely frustrating to have an online system that rarely gives updates on the status, and where we are told to simply be patient and are not even allowed to inquire on the status of our application before the 80% processing time, despite it going up from 9 months to 14 months, and two and a half months were essentially wasted by the closings of the Syrian Embassy in June and January, and the transfer time involved.
We appreciate the work of those who have worked hard to improve the system, and anticipate that you will make these improvements a top priority along with the ones you have already implemented this year to strengthen the integrity of Canada's immigration system.
Sincerely,
....
