This is what we wrote....
Dear Honorable IRCC Minister John McCallum,
The information you are about to read is concerning issues faced by a large group of new immigrants who are staying away from their spouse for a very long time, and this circumstance had lead us to face many hardships in our lives which we all feel should never happen to anyone.
A quote from Charles Schulz, “Absence makes the heart grow fonder, but it sure makes the rest of you lonely”, I second this quote however too much of absence is not. Staying away from our loved ones, especially the spouse (the one with whom we are going to spend most of our lifetime together), can be haunting due to emotional mental stress, physical weakness, and sleepless nights as all these succumb to a quality of being unproductive.
I’m not here to represent just myself rather a whole bunch of people who are sailing with me on the same boat. Most of us become permanent residents via various streams (CEC, FSW, PNP) but at that time of application we weren’t married (i.e. a single application), and we all knew that we will be getting married one day and will bring our spouse here, but only later we realized that we had to wait for 19 months for our spouse to be here in Canada. We all can feel each other as we have similar concerns and struggles that we are currently going through.
While we certainly understand that the new government had taken exceptional measures on reducing the processing times which is now less than 6 months for many countries, however, for few countries including India the processing time still remains considerably long and could be attributed to various constraints. Spouse is a spouse, and we all believe that every spouse immigrating to Canada should receive permanent residence immediately, or at least they should receive temporary residence until the final decision on their permanent resident application. The bottom line for most of us here is that we wanted to spend time with our spouse in Canada.
Since this new government has been showing incredible improvements in various sectors and they were also greatly listening to the needs of the people, hence, I would like to check with your office to see if it is possible to arrange an open group discussion with the honorable minister and if so I can gladly gather few people to travel to the respective government office. Our primary motive of this discussion is to understand more about the family spousal sponsorship process, its processing time, and also on the temporary resident visa process for the spouse while the family spousal application is in progress. Other than the processing times, we also would like to bring up some concerns and difficulties that are faced by various applicants throughout the process. I would be able to gather more people if we decided to have this open discussion over a video conferencing call.
We also acknowledge the tremendous efforts, hard work, over time that have been put by you and your team for the past 10 months, and we would like to thank you and your team for performing such a wonderful deed by bringing numerous refugees in no time.
I’m hoping to hear back from the honorable minister at his earliest convenience.
Thank you so much for your time.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
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Following is the response we got from them.....
Dear Mr. XXXXXXXXX:
I am replying to your correspondence of January 30, 2016 to the Prime Minister and to your emails of July 26, August 18, and September 27, 2016, addressed to the Honourable John McCallum, Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship, concerning delays in spousal sponsorship.
Please be assured that Citizenship and Immigration Canada reviews all applications objectively and consistently to ensure fair and equitable treatment of all applicants. We assess each application on its own merit against the program requirements.
We realize that those who have submitted their applications look forward to a decision being rendered within a reasonable waiting period after applying. We make every effort to deal with the applications we receive in the most efficient and effective way.
Family Class applicants are assessed under relaxed criteria. In addition to meeting the statutory requirements of being in good health and of good character, the visa officer must be satisfied that the applicant is not inadmissible to Canada and, in the case of spouses and common-law or conjugal partners, that the relationship is genuine and not entered into for immigration purposes only.
Family reunification is a core government priority. To this end, we have extended the pilot program which gives open work permits to eligible spouses or partners in Canada, whose in-Canada sponsorship applications have already been submitted. This allows applicants to work, provide for their families and contribute to the Canadian economy while waiting for their applications to be processed - 13,500 have taken advantage of this program and the numbers continue to rise (as of Dec. 31, 2015).
The increase in family class levels for 2016 will significantly reduce application inventories in this category. More families will be reunited with an increase in admissions for programs in the Family Class to between 75,000 – 82,000 admissions planned. This is higher than 2015 levels of 63,000 – 68,000 planned admissions.
The 2016 Annual Immigration Levels Plan will reduce the backlog and improve processing times in multiple programs, especially in the Family Class, by processing more applications and admitting 300,000 new permanent residents.
Regrettably, the Minister’s schedule does not allow him to meet with you at this time.
Thank you for writing and expressing your concerns. I trust that this information is of assistance.
Sincerely,
XXXXXXXXXX
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