First, congrats palamr that is wonderful news and hopefully we will have more.
@ people - I looked on the cic website and it appears that fsw processing time is 14 months which is down from something like 49 months from a few years previous. Which is good news, and from what I understand the computer issue that affected Buffalo has not crossed the Atlantic.
I contacted a government agency that was acting on my behalf, and it appears that Buffalo is aware of the issue which is great news. I was told that the computer system is fully operational, and they are plowing through the applications. There would be a delay of a few months for our applications during the specified timeline. The agencies internal metrics have also validated that there is a delay with our applications. We just got caught up in bad luck. We all want to be reunited with our wives/husbands/children. According to my calculations, we are for Nov 20th to March 1st running around roughly 15% PPR completion, and we should have been close to 50%. I hope that improves. However, I don't know if the new system uses the old system's same In Process guidelines then add 3-5 months to your date to get an approximation of PPR.
Regarding the political questions, the wonderful thing about Canada is that no political officer can move your place in line, that is the law. They have to address all the other people in line before you. If your brother who is a canadian citizen wants to advocate to the MP of his rider, than he should participate in the democratic process that he is entitled to. He should also expect that once the MP runs for election, the representative will also elicit his vote and possible campaign contributions. You can also apply for CAIPS notes to find out where you are in the immigration process, and that has been documented many other places.
For Buffalo, I am still surprised that there is only 51 employees handling such a huge workload, and hopefully the new system will make it easier for them, but if not I also hope that they get the resources(people) to help reunite all the families on this forum which is the highest priority for the immigration department. I also hope that by letting the MP's know this gets them the resources to handle our cases and the ones after us in the most expedient fashion.
One other thing that comes into play is their is a seasonality towards immigration. Ie. if only 10-15 people take vacation when their children have it, and when the weather is nice - that would mean a workforce reduction of 20-33%. That has an impact on processing speed. The other issue is that there is a quota system for spots that FSW's get, and when those run out for the year, then from what I understand IO switch to working on family class applications. When you read the threads from this you realize that last summer was slow and the fall really picked up. This helps my own expectations, but maybe since the system has been changed they are working even harder to finish cases, but my guess is that our timelines are later, they are going to make a push on our applications as those timelines are more imminent and finish the timelines of people who are about to go over the stated buffalo timelines.
