Hi to everyone in the forum. I would be extremely grateful if someone here could help me out of a bit of a situation.
I sent in a sponsor and permanent residence application for my wife (I am a Canadian citizen). The application package was returned to me because of a situation that is beyond our control: My wife has a daughter from a previous relationship, who was taken away from her by the child's father. My wife has not had any contact with the girl or the father for over 4 years, so it was not possible for us to get photos of the child or to get the child medically examined, although she does fall under the "dependent child" category according to CIC's definition.
My wife and the child's father split on extremely poor terms, to put it lightly, several years ago, but there was never any official custody battle. At the time, he was working internationally and was moving every 2 years or so due to his job requirements. This leaves us with no way to realistically track down the child or the father, and even if we did, he would certainly refuse to help us in any way.
We included a letter along with the application, outlining these unfortunate circumstances, but this does not seem to have been sufficient. The application was returned saying only:
1. Submit recent photographs for non-accompanying dependent child, <NAME>.
2. Please submit Medical Report Form(s) (IMM1017 - Copy 2) for non-accompanying dependent, <NAME>.
I found this response a little frustrating, because there was no mention of the letter that was included in the application. This leads me to believe that the officer perhaps did not see it among the sea of other papers in the envelope - otherwise he would have at least mentioned that the letter is insufficient, instead of just stating the obvious. Am I correct in this thinking? I called the CIC call centre earlier and inquired about this, but the call centre operator assured me that this was not the case, and that we just needed further proof that we did everything in our power to contact the child's father in order to get the child photographed and medically examined. She failed to provide details on what sort of proof is acceptable.
So I have 2 questions:
1. Is it possible that the officer simply didn't see the letter explaining the situation? Could this oversight be the reason for the simple rejection of the application?
2. If we do need to show further proof of attempting to contact the child's father, what type of proof is suitable? A recorded telephone conversation (if we can find his telephone number), an email, a written letter? How could we even go about trying to find a person when we don't even know the country he resides in?
I understand that these are difficult questions, but I am at my wit's end, and cannot really afford to pay a lawyer to handle this at the moment.
I will be deeply grateful for any advice I receive here.
Thanks!