PR details not in system - urgent help required please

[Pooja2025]

Hi everyone,

Me and my husband received our Copr last week and have been given time till november to land in canada. Since we are already in canada, we figured we would flagpole. We went to the border, crossed into us, were refused entry and came back. So far so good. However, when we went into the canadian immigration office, the officer took ages, made us wait, consulted his colleagues and finally told us that he cannot proceed with our application since our details are not reflecting in the system!! He asked us to comeback again sometime before november. It has been more than a week since we received copr (we have representation so probably it was received by them even earlier) and we have no criminal records, entry refusals or any such problems. We are just stumped as to what to do now. Has this happened to others? What should we do now? What is a reasonable timeframe to wait before we try again? I am sorry if this is a repeat query, i did try to search in the forum but did not find a similar issue. Any help is greatly appreciated.

 

[akbardxb]

Hi everyone,

Me and my husband received our Copr last week and have been given time till november to land in canada. Since we are already in canada, we figured we would flagpole. We went to the border, crossed into us, were refused entry and came back. So far so good. However, when we went into the canadian immigration office, the officer took ages, made us wait, consulted his colleagues and finally told us that he cannot proceed with our application since our details are not reflecting in the system!! He asked us to comeback again sometime before november. It has been more than a week since we received copr (we have representation so probably it was received by them even earlier) and we have no criminal records, entry refusals or any such problems. We are just stumped as to what to do now. Has this happened to others? What should we do now? What is a reasonable timeframe to wait before we try again? I am sorry if this is a repeat query, i did try to search in the forum but did not find a similar issue. Any help is greatly appreciated.

I haven't come across a similar case on this forum so far. Have you contacted the CIC ? Contact them first before trying it out again. There must be be a very good reason like a technical glitch.

 

[Pooja2025]

Thank you so much for the reply. We have already mailed the cic and tried to contact them but today being weekend, they are not reachable. Even otherwise, i am not really sure how approachable they would be (so far my experience has not been positive). Hopefully it is just a technical glitch as you said and will get sorted soon and nothing more serious :'(. We are going out of our minds.....

 

[canvis2006]

Hi everyone,

Me and my husband received our Copr last week and have been given time till november to land in canada. Since we are already in canada, we figured we would flagpole. We went to the border, crossed into us, were refused entry and came back. So far so good. However, when we went into the canadian immigration office, the officer took ages, made us wait, consulted his colleagues and finally told us that he cannot proceed with our application since our details are not reflecting in the system!! He asked us to comeback again sometime before november. It has been more than a week since we received copr (we have representation so probably it was received by them even earlier) and we have no criminal records, entry refusals or any such problems. We are just stumped as to what to do now. Has this happened to others? What should we do now? What is a reasonable timeframe to wait before we try again? I am sorry if this is a repeat query, i did try to search in the forum but did not find a similar issue. Any help is greatly appreciated.

Contact the office that issued the Visa/COPR - by email, or fax, etc

I would not leave it until november to go back, as soon as issue is resolved do the landing, and get it over with.

 

[Pooja2025]

Thanks, yeah we intend to. But it is proving difficult to contact CIC (no surprise there). So far they have not replied to emails, and if you call nobody picks the phone. Let's see...

 

[Pooja2025]

Ok, so I am replying to my own question hoping that the information will help someone who might face a similar situation. After 3 attempts, I finally managed to land today, yay me

Basically, this is what had happened in my case: due to some mistake from CIC in processing my application, they ended up generating two UICs (unique identification code) for me. Later they merged both the UICs into one before issuing my COPR but the merge was done only in the CIC system. As far as port of entries were concerned, they had access only to the latest UIC. But when they checked with that UIC, they were not able to see my details in the system due to the backward merge. Totally not their fault.

So, after the first failed attempt, we called CIC call center and they said everything is fine and asked us to try and land from another port. So we tried again at Peace bridge border where the agent told me that my information is still not visible to her, and she explained that this could happen mainly due to two reasons:

1) The data does not get downloaded from CIC system to the CBSA system.
2) There are multiple UICs associated with a person's name and the merger did not happen properly.

She told me that in either case, it is the CIC's problem and border agents cannot help. So again we contacted CIC and our lawyers too kept following up, and after few attempts finally we received a reply from CIC. They told us that the problem is with the UIC (problem 2 above) and gave us the old UIC number and asked us to tell the border agents to land us using that number. So, we did that and the border agent was able to process my documents, thank god!

For those whose data does not get downloaded properly i.e problem 1 (apparently it is not such a rare problem), the CIC has issued a bulletin regarding what to do. I am not able to post the link but you can search for it in google using the keyword "ob587". (updated: zardoz has posted the link in the comment below)

Basically, if you face the issue, you have to come back and land in the local CIC office or get your application updated (by contacting cic directly) and try again, border agents will not be able to help you.

In either case, there is no point trying to land unless you get a proper reply from CIC. The border agents cannot help as it is not a problem with their system. It is important to explain the issue to CIC clearly and make sure they update the system and give the details/alternate UIC to you in writing (and you need to take a print out of this information). From my experience, I think it is better to wait for a written reply from CIC directly (by email or fax) rather than just talking with the call center. If you don't want the hassle, you can book an appointment with local CIC office and do the process with them. You can get the appointment by calling the call center, and getting a date might take between 10-12 weeks.

Hope nobody else has to face this headache but if they do, hopefully this will help them. Thanks for all the help

 

[future_canadian]

Pooja thanks for returning to the forum to provide that very detailed description of the problem and the solution. Much appreciated!

+1

 

[zardoz]

The new procedure is at http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/resources/manuals/bulletins/2014/ob587.asp

 

[Pooja2025]

@ zardoz, it is not a new procedure per se but like i said, a workaround solution for the time being to the first problem i mentioned. If your problem like mine is with multiple uics then this will not help (in the sense that you will not get any priority). In that case, the only solution is to get the proper uic from cic and do the landing with that.

Of course you could avoid the hassle and go to local office for the landing but it will take 10-12 weeks to get an appointment. From my personal experience, you will not get a priority appointment unless the cic is sure that the problem is with data download (even then i m not sure if you will get priority, maybe or maybe not). I applied for an appointment on may 31st and till today cic has not even called me back to give the appointment date. The call center guys refused to consider my case as priority. The biggest problem is that we are dealing with three completely different systems : cic, border agents and call center, and they cannot see each other's data.

A much faster way in my opinion is to hound the cic directly by email or fax, get your application updated or get your alternate uic and do the landing as usual through a border.

@ futurecanadian - you are welcome, i hope it saves someone else the stress and hassle we had to go through