This is what I wrote to my MP in Toronto.
Dear Ms. Roxanne James,
I am a proud, law-abiding, tax-paying Canadian since 1992. I am writing this letter to you regarding the long processing time for Inland Spousal Sponsorship and PR.
I hope you know that it currently takes about 18 months for the spouse of a Canadian to become a permanent resident. The first stage (sponsorship approval) takes 10 months, which means 10 months without job and no healthcare coverage for the spouse.
It's now been 9 months and 7 days since we applied for Inland Sponsorship and Permanent Residency. I understand that there are lots of applications in queue and there are always limited number of officers who are working on the applications, so we need to be patient with this process.
However, these are what I don't understand:
1. why inland applications take 10 months while out-land applications take only 45 days?
2. why we let the husband/wife spend the whole time without job and no health coverage?
3. why we are left in the dark during the whole process without knowing what's going on? call center is available, but they have no idea on the details either
4. who approved to transfer all applications from CPC-Mississauga to CPC-Vegreville in the middle of the year without any notice to applicants and why did the processing time increased from 7 months to 10 months
5. why is there only 2 days worth of applications being processed at CPC-M since the applications have been transferred 3 months ago?
5. how come the courtesy is different for inland spouse sponsorship? The spouses of temporary foreign workers, students, skilled workers and other classes of immigrants are granted to work permits with processing time as short as a few month.
I had to quit my permanent job in Toronto and moved temporarily to BC with my wife to take a high paying contract job because I am the only source of income for my family. My wife is sitting at home, not being able to do anything, feeling insecure and useless during this whole time. I got married at age 40 and I would like to have kids as soon as possible, but that is also on hold because it will cost a fortune for my wife to go to hospital. My father-in-law got sick few days ago and he's in hospital now, but my wife can't travel back to visit him because there is no guarantee that the custom would let her back in to Canada.
I strongly believe that the best solution for this is either to make the inland processing time as fast as outland processing time, or to issue open work permit at the time when CIC received and acknowledged that the application is being processed.
I hope you can represent myself as your constituent and the hundreds of other Canadians and their families affected by these unexpected and unwarranted delays and make the process more efficient so that the spouses can be proud to become a Canadian and contribute to the society.
Thank you very much for reading this long letter.