Thread for outland Buffalo applicants!

[mommyk]

Rinnerz,

Just wanted to say I'm sorry to hear about how difficult this process has been for you. I can only imagine how frustrated you must feel. I hope you get some good news very soon!

 

[Kess]

Best of luck to you Rinnerz and everyone else here that is still waiting. I'm beginning to think I'll be the last one left here soon since our application was submitted last August. While there are complications to our application, we should have been much farther along in the processing. Buffalo had requested extra documents from us last Sept/Oct and according to the CAIPS notes they recorded them as received in Oct. Well when I finally got a response from my MP last March Buffalo claimed they never received the documents (state police check and court paperwork). That was 5 months of wasted time because of human error. Now we have to wait for a criminal rehabilitation application to be processed by our IO and then the PR... but of course because of all that wasted time my husband's medical results expired at the end of May. So now I assume we have to wait for a letter (thanks Canada Post for taking strike action now) to get the medicals re-done (another expense we can't afford) and they will put our application on dusty pile somewhere in the back to rot again.

 

[spiritrac]

Rinnerz. I understand your frustration. My sponsorship of my wife and son is being done thru an attorney and although I find them to be okay generally, sometimes they make mistakes for instance, we sent our application in November everything that the firm had asked us was sent but Mississauga wanted a piece of info that wasn't there and it took them a month to let me know why? because the person handling my file was on vacation. Consultants sometimes are not forth coming with the info that they received from the visa office and since they are in control of the information flow from the VO's we are at they mercy An IA could have been sent to them by email and went to the spam folder I never knew that my wife had had an IA until I checked ecas and saw her status changed to in process, I then called the lawyers and they told me and sent me an email outlining that interview was waived and to pay the RPRF and that the police certificate was needed.

How does Mississauga send their files to the visa offices? do they send it in an upload or do they send the hard copy to the visa offices? It may be that we are blaming the visa offices and yet the paper work is misplaced in Mississauga. I have had two instances in our filing that has been re requested, my son's birth certificate and my wife's police certificate from her home country yet both of them were sent to Mississauga with the file.

 

[Rinnerz]

Rinnerz. I understand your frustration. My sponsorship of my wife and son is being done thru an attorney and although I find them to be okay generally, sometimes they make mistakes for instance, we sent our application in November everything that the firm had asked us was sent but Mississauga wanted a piece of info that wasn't there and it took them a month to let me know why? because the person handling my file was on vacation. Consultants sometimes are not forth coming with the info that they received from the visa office and since they are in control of the information flow from the VO's we are at they mercy An IA could have been sent to them by email and went to the spam folder I never knew that my wife had had an IA until I checked ecas and saw her status changed to in process, I then called the lawyers and they told me and sent me an email outlining that interview was waived and to pay the RPRF and that the police certificate was needed.

How does Mississauga send their files to the visa offices? do they send it in an upload or do they send the hard copy to the visa offices? It may be that we are blaming the visa offices and yet the paper work is misplaced in Mississauga. I have had two instances in our filing that has been re requested, my son's birth certificate and my wife's police certificate from her home country yet both of them were sent to Mississauga with the file.

1) Except I have no reason to doubt my consultant. He's been amazing throughout all of this -- ridiculously thorough, and always quick to keep us updated. The minute he received the letter from CPC-M, we knew. It was the same with our AOR (it came by email and not to his spam folder, he told us asap -- and CAIPS notes confirm the date he got it now). When I was worrying about whether or not I'd need an interview, after looking over the mountain of proof we sent he kept saying, "You won't need an interview". We just took it as him consoling my wrecked nerves, but nope -- they waived that interview 1 day after sending my AOR. We spent over a month researching him before we hired him, and he was highly recommended by someone else who'd hired him before -- so that plus his 11 years' experience doesn't really leave us any room to put the blame on him.

2) I've often read on these forums that Mississauga sends the files to overseas visa offices by diplomatic courier.

 

[dhd]

Buffalo is one of the busiest, if not THE busiest, Canadian visa post in the world and there is definitely a workload factor present here as well but it is also one of the FASTEST processing offices for spousal sponsorship applications. Try to be as patient as you can without comparing yourself to others (I know that's hard) but you can definitely be grateful that you are not going through Hong Kong, Accra, Port-au-Prince or one of the MANY other slower visa posts.

This is hard to believe when you look at the table of January applicants and nearly everyone has gotten a PPR except the people from Buffalo, most of whom haven't even gotten an AOR yet.

The most frustrating thing is not knowing whether there is a problem with your application because they haven't even looked at it yet! It makes me particularly frustrated since we waited 3 extra months to get the FBI clearance before sending in the application, did the medicals, paid all the fees up front. Why did we even bother?

You'd think that Mississauga could at least give you some feedback before forwarding it to Buffalo...

sorry for ranting... just annoyed

 

[Rinnerz]

What is CAIPS? Can you please explain?

I'm sorry, I just saw your question now. CAIPS notes are the computerized notes with details on what progress has been made on your overseas file during processing. More info is here: http://immipedia.ca/CAIPS. General information about how to get them is here: http://immipedia.ca/Ordering_FOSS_and_CAIPS_notes. There are also a ton of posts on these boards detailing how to get them.

Best of luck to you Rinnerz and everyone else here that is still waiting. I'm beginning to think I'll be the last one left here soon since our application was submitted last August. While there are complications to our application, we should have been much farther along in the processing. Buffalo had requested extra documents from us last Sept/Oct and according to the CAIPS notes they recorded them as received in Oct. Well when I finally got a response from my MP last March Buffalo claimed they never received the documents (state police check and court paperwork). That was 5 months of wasted time because of human error. Now we have to wait for a criminal rehabilitation application to be processed by our IO and then the PR... but of course because of all that wasted time my husband's medical results expired at the end of May. So now I assume we have to wait for a letter (thanks Canada Post for taking strike action now) to get the medicals re-done (another expense we can't afford) and they will put our application on dusty pile somewhere in the back to rot again.

Thanks Kess. I'm really hoping you (and others who applied well before me) hear from them before we do, all things considered. We're in the same boat in terms of worrying about expired medicals; mine expire August 1, and there's no way we'll be able to afford to redo them unless things pick up drastically. At best, it'd end up being more credit card debt. Someone on another forum I frequent received her PPR and landed when her medicals had already been expired for about 3 months; Buffalo never made her redo them. So who knows, really. Just another thing that's inconsistent. Good luck.

The most frustrating thing is not knowing whether there is a problem with your application because they haven't even looked at it yet! It makes me particularly frustrated since we waited 3 extra months to get the FBI clearance before sending in the application, did the medicals, paid all the fees up front. Why did we even bother?

When I went on my latest "how inefficient can they be" rant to my consultant about Buffalo losing people's police checks, he told me pretty much exactly the same thing rjessome just said -- i.e. that the "scary part" (as he put it) is that Buffalo is considered one of the most efficient visa posts in the world. So, imagine. But as for why you bothered: because if you hadn't included those things initially, you probably would have had an additional 3 months or more tacked onto your wait -- on top of all the waiting now just for them to get to your file. Plus all the risks of things getting lost while being couriered/mailed, waiting around for them to ask for stuff, possibly not confirming receipt ever, having to attach them to your file, etc.

 

[avon]

@ Rinnerz,
Your situation is really terrible, and I feel bad for you, and also hope that it gets resolved quickly. You have been invaluable to the forum with your insights for the group.

It appears that buffalo post just tried to eliminate the temporary visa situation so people could visit canada during the summer months. I hope they have completely eliminated the backlog, and can get restarted on family class permanent resident visas. I don't know what to make of this anymore as from this site their has been almost no movement this week. I do hope that all of us hear soon as I miss my wife and son dearly.

@ dhd - I agree. I just looked at the timesheet for January and February folks, and theirs looks like ours with people from all over the world including new dehli, acrra ghana, london, the phillipines, mexico getting their Permanent residency before people from buffalo. Buffalo seems to be the slow one for January and February groups as well as all the visa offices have issued pprs. Of course, February people are a bit delayed based on timelines. I am not to cast blame, but something odd seems to be appearing in buffalo, and I am not sure that they are presently the most efficient in the world as these other visa offices have been very efficient. My guess is that the computer system that rolled out was done in the US first, but it must have had some major computer glitches as not functional for at least 1-2 months. Now they are transitioning, and it isn't working very well. Purely conjecture though....My guess, and hope is that they have figured it out, and next week we start hearing some good news

@ Romain - thnx last week for responding to my questions about the reply I received from the visa offices. Hope that NY has replied to your email, and you get IA.

From looking at past posts, it appears that when they say medicals have been received, the next stage is decision made which should happen soon for those people that have it changed. From past posts, this means the security check is done. We shall see....

 

[boomerang11]

I agree with avon...

I feel bad for those who applied last year or early this year and haven't yet heard anything. There's always the fear your documents were "lost in the system" and for some...that's exactly true, as we've heard. Human error happens, but you definitely don't want it to happen to you!

I'm very hopeful, though, that everyone moves along at a good speed and that our friends who applied late last year and early this year move even faster so they can catch up soon!

 

[Trish1982]

*sigh* another week goes by....

Another week of NOTHING from Buffalo.

 

[mossee]

Just got an email from Buffalo!!

Dear Applicant:

This refers to your application for permanent residence in Canada. We are now in a position to request your passports for visa issuance.

Please submit your passport(s) before 08-AUGUST-2011 . The issuance of your visa(s) is time sensitive so it is important for you to submit your passport(s) as requested

Just a questions for those with experience, it ask's for 2 recent pictures and height and eye colour, do we just write height and eye colour on a piece of paper?
And also should I be sending these documents out via Canada Post with the strike issue going on?

OMG OMG OMG...sorry cannot believe this is actually here!

 

[mrswolfe]

Just got an email from Buffalo!!

Dear Applicant:

This refers to your application for permanent residence in Canada. We are now in a position to request your passports for visa issuance.

Please submit your passport(s) before 08-AUGUST-2011 . The issuance of your visa(s) is time sensitive so it is important for you to submit your passport(s) as requested

Just a questions for those with experience, it ask's for 2 recent pictures and height and eye colour, do we just write height and eye colour on a piece of paper?
And also should I be sending these documents out via Canada Post with the strike issue going on?

OMG OMG OMG...sorry cannot believe this is actually here!

Oh wow! Congrats!!!

 

[pdb1]

From looking at past posts, it appears that when they say medicals have been received, the next stage is decision made which should happen soon for those people that have it changed. From past posts, this means the security check is done. We shall see....

What I dont understand is what kind of security check does the visa office look for from foreign government. Our application includes criminal background check from all the countries that we have lived for more than 6 months after the age of 18. In my case, I had UK, Switzerland and US. My biggest worry for processing time will be these security checks from so many different countries. Does anyone know what these checks are?

 

[Rinnerz]

Just a questions for those with experience, it ask's for 2 recent pictures and height and eye colour, do we just write height and eye colour on a piece of paper?
And also should I be sending these documents out via Canada Post with the strike issue going on?

1) Most just write it on a piece of paper, properly addressed to them with all your personal info. I've seen PMM say you can just write it on the back of one of the photos.

2) Probably not. See their website instructions for mailing from Canada during the strike: http://www.canadainternational.gc.ca/buffalo/imm/contact-contactez.aspx

What I dont understand is what kind of security check does the visa office look for from foreign government. Our application includes criminal background check from all the countries that we have lived for more than 6 months after the age of 18. In my case, I had UK, Switzerland and US. My biggest worry for processing time will be these security checks from so many different countries. Does anyone know what these checks are?

The background check has nothing to do with the police clearances you've submitted. The clearances only determine that, as far as local law enforcement is concerned, you have no criminal record. The background check looks into nearly everything else: they likely confirm all the addresses you gave them and your personal history, who/what you've been associated with, etc. I see it as a confirmation that you are who you say you are and that nothing about you -- directly or indirectly -- can pose a risk to Canada's security in some way or another.

 

[pdb1]

OK...now I understand. Thanks

 

[Tiggilicious]

Im a little upset. I emailed Buffalo asking if we can send in my hubbys NY Birth certificate since we didnt send it in with the original application since we were told at first by the call centre that we didnt need to since we sent in a copy of his passport. but then heard we were supposed to send it in anyways when I asked a consultant out of curiosity.
Anyways, I emailed Buffalo and asked if we can send it in, and if theres possibly a file # already made for us since we sent in our app in Mississauga at the end of January, and they said that they are still very backlogged and continue to be backlogged and that its now approx on average for someone to get assigned a file #. That bummed me out