Thread for people using the Guatemala Office

[GuateVision83]

CONGRATS!!!! My husband also got a call today!!! They said they have and envalope for him to pick up...wonder what it is?!! Hes going Monday morning to get it. I cant wait! I hope its GOOD news!!

Thank you Amimarin I have a good feeling about that envelope. I hope you receive GREAT news and that you also reunite with your family soon. God bless

 

[dgoodman]

Congratulations to both of you! GuateVisian, I can't believe how fast your application went through! That's only 3 1/2 mo! I hope ours goes through that quickly!

 

[AmiMarin]

so the envelope was just for more documents Maybe somebody can help us figure out what two of these documents are...
The first: "Reasons for Decision and Order - Refugee decision by Immigration and Refugee Board (IRB) / Personal Information Form (PIF)
I assume these have to do with my husbands previously denied Refugee claim. I have here a letter he recieved in DEC 2010 from a Pre-Removal Risk Assessment Officer explaining why the refugee status was denied and there IS a section called "Decision and Reasons" but we arent sure if this is what the VO wants and I of course cant get ahold of them. Also I have a form from 2005 called Personal Information Form from when my husband made his application for Refugee. But, I dont understand why these documents are being requested (if it IS these documents they want) and why the embassy doesnt have access to them....

The other document we cant figure out is "Declaration regarding previous marital status with XXXXX XXXXXXXX" my husband was never married before. He called a statistics office in Guatemala to see if they can give him something saying that he was never married but they said no, they only give certificates saying if you were previously married but now divorced....WTH?!

Anybody have an idea what these forms are and how to get them???
Thanx

 

[AmiMarin]

Anybody have updates??
We finally got all of the requested documents together and my husband is dropping them off at the Embassy tomorrow morning so hopefully we get the PPR soon. We just missed out on our 1yr wedding anniversary the other day soooo sad I dont wanna miss any more important days. And our 2yr old son asked me the other day "daddy all done work? daddy coming soon?" this sux sooo much! Not saying that my case is more important than anybody elses, but, you would think that when there are childeren involved they would try to speed it up a bit!

 

[bender20]

I am wondering if anyone else has had a similar experience to ours...

My husband and I are currently awaiting PR approval, as well as Criminal Rehabilitation approval (which must be received first, before decisions are made for PR). Everything is passing through the Guatemala office. We first applied for PR in April 2010, I was approved as a sponsor in May 2010, we received a request from CIC to send my husband's passport to them in September 2011 (which we sent), and then received a request from CIC to submit an application for Criminal Rehabilitation (which we did in May 2011). In January 2012 we received a request from CIC that we must submit the extra $800 for further criminal rehabilitation application processing for our application to be submitted to the Minister. Our lawyer has advised us that this is good news, as he has never had a file get forwarded to the Minister with the likelihood of the Minister providing the approval. I have read through the CIC "ENF 14" document (found online) that outlines the following:

"Case Review, Case Management Branch (BCM), will review the application for accuracy and completeness and complete its own rehabilitation assessment. If BCM is making a positive recommendation, the rehabilitation submission and the recommendation are forwarded to the
Minister of C&I for a decision on whether to grant rehabilitation to the applicant. If the recommendation is negative, BCM will forward the rehabilitation assessment and any other documents not previously disclosed to the responsible office for disclosure to the applicant."

Am I correct in assuming that the fact that our application is being forwarded to the Minister is evidence to support that the Case Management Branch is making a positive recommendation for rehabilitation (or do all serious rehabilitation cases - whether recommended for approval or not by CIC officers - reach the Minister level)? We are tying to evaluate the odds of us receiving the criminal rehabilitation approval.

In addition, in January 2012 when CIC requested the $800 cheque from us they also requested a return air waybill (CIC has had our passport for 1.5 years, so they didn't need to request this from us) and new medical tests (our original set of medicals completed in February 2010 have expired). I have heard that when CIC is close to issuing PR they will request passport and new medicals if these have expired (in order to issue the PR visa with the expiry date as 1 year from the last medical exam date).

In everyone's personal opinion, are the facts that our rehabilitation application is being forwarded to the Minister, CIC has asked for new medicals, and CIC has asked for an air waybill to send us back my husband's passport a good sign? Has anyone had (or heard of) an experience where the rehabilitation application was recommended by the CIC officer but then refused by the Minister (I know it is possible, as the Minister does not need to agree with the officer's recommendation, but does this happen often?), and/or an experience where new medicals are requested and the passport is planning to be sent back, but the PR is not issued (except obviously in the case where there is a problem with the medical exam results, as this could be grounds for refusal)? If so, I don't know why CIC would request new medicals nearing the end of this 2-year process if they were not planning on issuing the PR.

Anyone else going through this with the Guatemala office? Thank-you to anyone and everyone who replies!

 

[AmiMarin]

Just want to vent on here how pissed off this whole thing is making me!!!
Jan 20th my husband recieved a call to get an envelope from the embassy. He went and got it and asked the woman working in the office if she could give him an estimate until this is all done. She said that if we submitted the requested documents right away it would be 4 weeks....
4weeks went by so I called the member of parliment and the secretary said she was going to send an email to Guatemala to see whats happening and would get back to me...a week went by and i didnt hear anything so I called back. She said the embassy never replied to her so sent another email. Another week went by and I heard nothing so called her back. She said that she recieved and email that said the decision would be made by the end of that week (march 16th)...
we waited and waited and heard nothing...the next week i tried calling 3 or 4 times and she never answered so I left 2 messages. I know that I probably sound desperate to her but I AM!! And i know that its probably annoying her that I keep calling but its been 9 months since guatemala recieved the application and 5 months that my 1 and 2yr old and I havent seen my husband....not even the status on ecas has been changed from we recieved your application on June 9 2011. I know that the processing time says 18months but i tthought that when there are kids involved they went faster. Right on the government of Canada website it says that canada is all about reuniting families...
I know there are families who have had to wait longer than we have to finally be together and start their lives and that makes me SOOO Fing mad...how does this effect kids who dont understand that daddy or mommy arent ALLOWED to be here with them right now...I know my daughter knows something is missing but isnt sure what or why. She was always daddys girl and now she prefers sitting with men over women. She always goes right to uncle or grandpa when they are around. She always takes my wallet and looks at the picture of daddy and kisses it...and my son has stopped asking for daddy and never wants to talk on the phone with him anymore...i feel so bad! Hes not old enough to tell me what he thinks or why he doesnt want to talk to daddy. Im so worried that he feels like daddy betrayed him and doesnt want to be here. My babies and their dad are going to have to rebuild their relationship completely from the start because they have been apart for so long. And my husband has his two kids with him in guatemala. Now 9 and 11years old. He left guatemala to come work in canada to give them a better life and didnt see them for 9 years...hes missed out on all 4 of his kids lives....what are we going to do if he doesnt get residence?!
And my husband working for 35cents an hour isnt enough to support him AND 2 kids there so im here working 2 minimum wage jobs, paying rent, paying bills, paying daycare, and sending money to my husband and the kids and Im NOT ALLOWED to go on welfare. I understand that the government doenst want to bring in new people just to put them on welfare but how the hell are we supsosed to get by like this not even by OUR choice?! We were fine before they sent him out of canada so why cant they take that into consideration and let us not so wealthy people get some help until they let our husbands and wives back to contribute to our income?!

Well, if somebody is still reading this... March 21st our lawyer called me and said that the embassy requested another paper...a paper to prove that i havent recieved welfare since the time of the application so i got that paper and the lawyer sent it the next day by email...we still havent heard anything about if its approved or not, and if it is approved, we still have to get an ARC and God knows how much longer that will take!

Thanx for reading this, feels good to vent and for anybody who has been waiting for long than we have been, Im really sorry for you and I hope that this all turns out good for you! And everybody else...I hope you DONT have to wait this long! Imagine waiting all this time to get a decision of NO!

 

[Mez007]

Anyone have any Update from this office ?
How long After you Receive the OAR from That office after the file has been transfer to Them ?

 

[dgoodman]

I'd be interested in knowing that too, I received my AOR a couple of weeks ago. Also, I've heard that some VOs make the passport request as soon as they start on the application and some wait until the application is approved before requesting. Does anyone know what Guatemala does?

Does anyone know what a air waybill is? the AOR said that we should have one on file at the VO (to send documents to us if needed I guess)

 

[Mez007]

I'd be interested in knowing that too, I received my AOR a couple of weeks ago. Also, I've heard that some VOs make the passport request as soon as they start on the application and some wait until the application is approved before requesting. Does anyone know what Guatemala does?

Does anyone know what a air waybill is? the AOR said that we should have one on file at the VO (to send documents to us if needed I guess)

Do you Remember when you file was sent to Guatemala ? and how long after did you receiver Aor from Guatemala ? was it by Email or Mail ?

THanks

 

[dgoodman]

Do you Remember when you file was sent to Guatemala ? and how long after did you receiver Aor from Guatemala ? was it by Email or Mail ?

THanks

My approval from Mississauga was April 20. I think I received the AOR from Guatamala about a week later. I can't remember exactly. It did not take very long though.

 

[Mez007]

My approval from Mississauga was April 20. I think I received the AOR from Guatamala about a week later. I can't remember exactly. It did not take very long though.

Ok Thank you, I beleive my was around the same date, but STill nothing yet from the Guatemala office. Was you AOR sent by REgular mail or Email ?

 

[dgoodman]

It was sent by e-mail to my wife who is the applicant. Maybe if you didn't put both e-mail addresses they will send it by regular mail.

 

[frapo]

Student topic but it's related to the oh so not helpful Guatemala office.

I hold Guatemalan and German passports and am planning on studying at a culinary institute in Ottawa for 9 months and because of the length of the program which doesn't create or confer a degree.

On March 9th I submitted a request for a student permit at the Guatemala office with my Guatemalan passport and was sure that after the 25 days I'd see my passport back with an answer.

The VAC and Embassy requested additional paperwork (meds and some personal stuff) and an FBI Certificate (I studied college in the States). However the certificate never came. I requested the Embassy (through the VAC) to overlook it because as time goes by the certificate would come after classes start at the institute that I plan attending so basically gave up on the visa and requested the cancelation of the application process as I may have another option to study there.

Now for some reason the embassy hasn't returned my passport because, according to the VAC, they have to consider my case?!?!?!

First question, what's to consider when I request the cancelation of the visa process and not return my passport?

Second question, the culinary institute is able to fraction the program in to three courses that last three months each. Would I be able to go into Canada, study, and exit every 3 months since according to the immigration law, programs that are under 6 months of length don't require student permits?

 

[AmiMarin]

Passport Request and ARC application on May 4th!!! Hopefully not much longer!

 

[ferd2000hn]

As many other FSW applicants who applied before 28/Jun/2010, my application is also in a sort of limbo. We were told that applications were going to be processed in 6-12 months, and for some the wait has become a matter of years.

Initially I was very patient and was just waiting for an answer. In fact I’m still waiting for an answer! However I started researching what had happened, why our applications were taking so long? And, most depressingly; why some people who applied in 2011 had their case move along so quickly?

I started reading forums from all over the world, and finally I found (unfortunately I lost the link) an explanation given to a migration consultant out of Manila by the head of CIC for the South Pacific, in a nutshell the reason was that every time CIC sets a new set of rules they are in fact creating a new category of FSW applicants, and that newer categories get processed first as they are considered more relevant for the Canadian Government. The CIC person couldn’t provide a timeline on when each category will be addressed, as each embassy has a different capacity to process applications, and they will use their capacity to process first the higher priority applications, and if there is still capacity available, the next lower category will be addressed and so on.

The immediate question that comes to mind is “what’s the processing capacity in Guatemala?” Again I started looking for information and finally found a website with all sorts of statistics from the Canadian Government, including Immigration. I downloaded several spreadsheets, consolidated data and got meaningful information from them. The information I will share in my next few posts has been taken from MULTIPLE SPREADSHEETS and consolidated in order to make sense of all the data. Feel free to browse the files yourself, but it will take you some time to get the information I will post; or, take my word and trust my numbers.

The only downside I found is that the information is updated quarterly and lags a quarter; i.e. in early April 2012 the data files were updated up to 31/Dec/2011. The following information reflects information from that data set. I will update all info in early July once data from the first quarter (Jan/Feb/Mar) of 2012 is included.

For the curious among you, data website (replace commas): www,data,gc,ca/default,asp?lang=En&n=F9B7A1E3-1

Cheers!