Hello everyone. I applied May 2014 to sponsor my wife. I'm a Canadian citizen; she's a US citizen. We were living in the US but found out with Obamacare we would have to pay $1,000US per month for only partial healthcare coverage. In Alberta I had paid $0 per month for full coverage. So we sent our application, packed all of our things, put them in storage and moved to Canada.
I'm disabled, have a fixed income and can't work. Of course we knew my wife couldn't work here until she got her PR card. We had limited finances (not enough to pay our monthly expenses) so we thought we could live on promotional credit card debt until she could go to work. I read on the forum here that a lot of people got approved in 6-8 months. So, full of hope we thought we'd make it through and enjoy a better quality of life.
Last August I was approved as a sponsor. Then Nothing happened with our application until last January. My wife got an e-mail saying they required court records, we had 60 days to get them to Ottawa and, if we didn't meet the deadline, our application would be considered abandoned. It took a full month for the courthouse to even print the records so we had to spend $125 to rush the documents to them late February. I felt certain we'd have the PR in March. Once again, no action for months. I quit checking staus because it was soul destroying to see the months go by, have our debt piling up and see no action.
During our wait, CIC lost our medical report, said they sent us an e-mail requesting it (never got it). Didn't even know it was missing until they mentioned it on their January court records request. I changed addresses on their website and it never updated for over a month.Their website often didn't work. I filed a paper application because it was so unreliable. When I called them during our wait I was simply told it was "in processing".
We moved to a small island in BC last year to save rent money. At the end of May our lease was up. However, our landlord wanted to use the cottage for the May long weekend so he said we could leave on May 15 instead. Perfect, we'd save half a month's rent that way. Woohoo! We had 3 days to pack. Once we were somewhat settled here, I checked our status at the end of May. It said "decision made"!!!
I immediately phoned CIC and they said our PR had been approved. A notice had been snail mailed to us the end of the first week of May. (They said in the January e-mail all correspondence would be through e-mail.) BUT the CPR expired on May 20!!!!!!! The agent was confused because they usually gave 6 weeks or more. It turns out they mailed it just in time for it to arrive the day we moved. We didn't check the mailbox that day. Amazing timing.
She sent an e-mail to Ottawa CPC, explaining what had happened. She asked what hours we'd be available for a phone call and we said anytime! We carried our cell phones wherever we went for 2 weeks but no call, no e-mail, no mail. I phoned and they said no response from Ottawa, we'd just have to wait. Another 2 weeks went by, I phoned and they said no response yet. Nothing they could do about it. He even added that it could take weeks or even months to send out another CPR, since the bureaucrats would be going on vacation soon. Then he said to have a nice day at the end of the call. In a subsequent phone call we found out the reason for the short expiry date was that our medical report was good for 1 year and it had expired!!! A new medical report will probably have to be obtained, we were told, but it's up to Ottawa. So it seems they expect us to fork out a few more hundred dollars because they did nothing with our application for months.
After that I thought it was time to contact my MP about it. I was told they cannot and will not interfere in the process.
So that's where we're at right now. Thousands and thousands of dollars in debt, no PR and no hope of any extra income anytime soon. Can't afford to move, can't work. Lying awake at night wondering how we'll survive.
We are going to lose all our goods in the US because we can't pay for storage anymore or to move it here. We will probably have to file for bankruptcy here because we won't be able to pay our debts when the promotional interest rate expires.
This has been the most prolonged frustrating, emotionally exhausting, stressful experience in my life. Our dream of living here has become a recurring daily nightmare, all thanks to CIC.
I thought I'd write our story here as a warning to any applicants here: Don't assume that because you're good people your applications will go through with few problems. To CIC it doesn't matter how poor, desperate, disabled etc. you are. You will only experience cold-hearted bureaucracy from them. If you're a Christian, don't assume that you'll have no problems getting a PR. God is no match for the gods of CIC, who hold your future in their hands, who do what they want when they want and are responsible to no one for their actions. Your faith will likely be shredded, like mine has been.
