It's a little late for me to start laying out our timeline, but I'll try to lay out a few of the more important things.
I went to the Philippines and married in April 2011, with the idea that this would go very smooth and I'd soon have my wife with me in Canada.
When I kissed my wife goodbye the only thing that kept us strong was that we both felt it would only be 2 or 3 months before she'd be able to join me, and we could start living like a family.
Boy were we Naive!!
That's the maximum it should take in my opinion, but the CIC sees it a whole different way. The paperwork alone was so ridiculously hard that if Merlyn wasn't really good with clerical stuff we'd have been sunk before we started. Then there were certain documents they needed, police reports from different places she lived etc. that took long enough to gather and meant flying her to her home province, getting her passport renewed in her new name etc., so by the time I finally had the package ready to sent to Mississauga it was Sept. 07, 2011 already.
It only took about 2 1/2 month for my approval as a sponsor, and we had a good feeling that everything was going to zip through without any problems at all.
From what we understand the documents got to Manila, and my wife got a notice about them receiving them in Late Dec. (why so long from Mississauga to Manila I have no idea)
There were a couple of missing documents my wife was asked to supply, .. one of those an FBI clearance from the USA since she was there for more than 6 months in 1991
Time went by and we were sure she'd receive her visa any day (and this is back in the summer of 2012), cause really once they had the FBI clearance what else was there to hold them back?
Time dragged on and dragged on till I finally got sick of waiting and asked my MP's office to look into it for us. The answer we got was that everything was good, but they needed to get her (and her son) to go through another medical because the last ones had expired.
On Oct. 01, 2012 they both did that, ... and yet here we sit still waiting on Dec. 05, 2012 with huge questions about if we're going to be together by Christmas or not.
This is so frustrating and there really is no reason for them to drag their asses like that as people lives hang in the balance.
If they can't do the job fast and efficient they just plain shouldn't be there. Just like every other office there are those who do things twice as fast as others, as well as those that are just there for the money and don't care about getting the job done.
A workmate filed to bring his wife from the Philippines 7 month (give or take a bit) after us, .. and his wife landed in Canada last Sunday. I'm not saying that shouldn't have happened for them, just that if it can happen that fast for them it should happen that fast for everyone. It just makes it so hard to celebrate with them when it took them 8 month start to finish and we're sitting at 15 month and still no visa. I guess the only consultation is I know we're not the only ones who are way past the time it should have took.