hila01 said:
Visa Application Centre (VAC) opened in London
A new VAC opened in London on May 2, 2013. The VAC is operated by VFS Global and is located at The Battleship Building, 179 Harrow Road, London W2 6NB.
Effective immediately, all temporary resident (visitor visa, study or work permit) and permanent resident travel document applications for Canada should be submitted either online or through the VAC. The visa office will accept submissions in person on Wednesday from 8:00am to 10:30am (excluding holidays). Please visit the VAC website for details on application submission.
We encourage you to apply online or through the VAC (either in person or by mail) as applications submitted directly to the visa office will take longer to process. By submitting an application through the VAC, you will be able to take advantage of the extended hours of service, more flexible payment methods, online tracking of your application, and the assurance that your application is complete and all the proper documentation is included. We are confident that this will lead to more efficient processing of your application.
Unfortunately what you are pointing out doesn't apply to us, yes they have opened a new office on Harrow Road, but it is not for the processing of FSW PR visas. So yes they will have to move offices from Grosvenor square, as pointed out the address to send documents to is Grosvenor square and not Harrow road. Also the only visas processed at harrow road are
temporary resident (visitor visa, study or work permit) and permanent resident travel
none of these are FSW PR visas, I think you might be confusing the
Permanent resistant travel visas which is as follows
http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/information/applications/travel.asp
and not what we have applied for.
My concerns still stand, I expect that they have sold the offices for the money, obviously, and they are going to have to transfer all of the thousands of paper visa applications to the new offices, which is going to take time and will undoubtedly cause a delay, how much we just don't know, could be days but I expect months. We all know when we move house it takes a while to settle in.
Unfortunately everything is pointing to a long wait period,
1)Nobody has heard anything from the LVO (except to say, "your visas application has been received and the average processing time is 25 months) Not 12 months, like some might think.
2)A lot of other visa offices have not only issued MR but have issues visas this quickly, again nothing from London.
3)London has to process a huge amount of applications a lot more than some offices, so their back log is obviously huge.
4)Some 2010/2011 applicants are still awaiting visas and if London is going to clear this back log first, well who knows.....probably years.
5)Finally to top it off they have just sold the offices where all our visas are...........and they ARE going to have to move them all. Every single one.
6)Oh yeah and the 6 month workers strike at the beginning of all this by the Visa staff, perfectly times in MAY/JUNE.......probably the biggest thing that is going to cause a delay. (sorry forgot that one).
I really appreciate everyone that emails the minster, that is all we can do at present and I just hope he reads them and takes some kind of action.
Thank You
