dreamfromafar said:
Chillax my friend ;D.....patience is the name of the game here.
Collective Representation ==?”CR”.....sounds more like comfort room, where likely our appeal will be.... Spearheading this is not even in my thoughts! Wahhhh, thanks to Wayne. It's now all on me....kidding aside, I'm sure Vermas and you will help make this happen.
We need to find an effective approach. Wayne has helped us cover the major points on how we can suggest CIC to move their ARSE faster. I have copied and saved all of Wayne's suggestions. The big question now is how to merge pieces of information, suggestions and thoughts into one?
- Is it going to be a letter type addressed to CIC? Hmmmm
- Can anybody think of any other effective way we can get across our message in other form like media? (bigtime!...not likely to happen)
- Is there a governing body, like a middle man overseeing the immigration department or section of all countries where we can elevate our appeal? Something like UN?
- How about email blast?
- How about using social networks, blogging?
Sorry if I sound so desperate...and some of my suggestions are ridiculous :'(.
I read in one thread a post (in passing) about a link on where we can post a “petition” type thingy. I just don't know how to get back to that post....can't remember the title of the thread.
Like I said before, I'm not good in conducting survey.....more so putting pretty words to impress on a statement. I'm just good in sympathizing and embracing ideas.
Inputs inputs inputs please.....!!!!
Hey peeps! No promises ....not sure if this idea will materialize, OK? We're lucky to have this forum, where we can express our frustrations. Maybe this is just what we need for now to keep us going. Healthy arguments, it kills time. Thanks to Wayne! Made me exercise my brain, whatever is left of it. Before we know it, 2 years have passed and we are back in the queue.... Although “speaking our minds” would not be a bad idea.
Hi dreamfromafar,
A few things to remember:
- If your letter is too long, it will not get read and will end up in the bin
- If your letter is too negative and goes on about demands and rights, it will not get read and will end up in the bin
They have 300,000 applications left to process. Yes, they've made some key mistakes - which they are now addressing, but admitting that won't reducing their 300,000 application backlog. And they have a finite amount of resource and I very much doubt any letter from us is going to get the parliament to agree additional funding to allocate more resource.
IT changes such as the ones I suggested I think could speed up the process (especially if they allowed applications to apply online and fill in online forms, this would save time with manual data entry at CIO as well as reduce human error etc), however - these are long-term suggestions. It took CIC the best part of a decade to implement GCMS, so they're not going to change their application system overnight, it's going to take years.
Most applicants, although not entirely happy with delays, would be happier if they at least had decent communication from CIC. If CIC told them "sorry for the delay but we think we will be able to process your application in about 13 months, looking at your visa office's current work pattern and workload", then the delay is annoying people can at least plan around it. It's the "sorry we haven't got a clue when we'll get round to processing your application, just sit there and wait indefinitely until we get back to you" which applicants find unacceptable.
I think the main win here is to try to get better communication from CIC.
I'd approach it by congratulating them on recent changes to speed up processing times and reduce the backlog by introducing the in-demand list and NOC caps, but that we feel things could be further improved by better communication.
Go on to suggest that if visa offices had a dedicated web page where they published their work patterns, workloads, where they are with various batches of applications, projected timescales etc, this would help relieve stress and anxiety of applicants AND also reduce the query workload that each visa office has to deal with. A small amount of 1 person's time at each visa office per month would yield big benefits.
It may also be worth mentioning that the start of the process could also be improved with a simple email at each stage of the application - i.e an email when the application is actually received, an email when it passes its completeness check etc.
I feel generally any communication, even those in writing such as medical requests, should be accompanied by an email. For example, our medical requests came by ordinary unregistered post, with no other communication from the visa office. If the postman had posted that through the wrong letterbox, we'd never have known we'd received medical requests and after the 60 day time limit our application would have failed. A simple email saying "we've sent you medical requests" would alert applicants that they should be expecting the correspondence by mail, and give them the opportunity to query it if it does not arrive.
I think these are the only immediate wins we can realistically hope might be taken on board. It may be worth adding a paragraph for some longer-term suggestions, but you need to be careful not to make the letter too long - we want them to actually read it!
Best of luck with it,
Wayne.
