To me, being a Canadian sponsor, I read the immigration manuals, and I read these posts and there is just so much that makes me angry. So much red tape, redundant rules, barriers to immigration seemingly just for the sake of it.
This is not meant to be a complaining post, just things that I would like to see happen, and things I may write to my MP about and try to affect some change in the system.
First off: Dual streams for applications.
Is there any real need to have inland vs. outland applications? It seems to me that there should be just one stream for each category of application. People living in Canada on visitors visa have the choice to apply inland or outland, this is something I did not know when me and my wife submitted our inland application. And now we are stuck with no right to appeal, no freedom to leave Canada, just because we decided to apply inland.
What is the purpose of this? Why not just have one single stream of family class applications, with the right to appeal? This will not create more problems for immigration canada, this will if anything speed up the process by allowing the offices to pool their resources instead of having two different sets of forms, two different sets of rules, dozens of offices around the world could be processing cases faster, and the folks up in Vegreville could maybe cut down on their processing time from the ridiculous figure of 9 months.
Second: Medical Examinations
Well, as most of us know, spouses and dependent children are exempt from medical requirements for admissability. So why do we have to spend upwards of $200 a person to examine nearly our entire family, even those who will never be coming to Canada? How many times have I seen posts where an ex-husband or ex-wife refuses to co-operate with getting kids medically examined? My wife is in this same situation herself. Her ex may or may not decide to take her kids in england to get their medical examinations, but since we have applied inland, she can't even leave the country to take her kids herself. And even though their examinations have no bearing whatsoever on their admissablity, failure to provide them means they can never, ever ever ever be sponsored. This smacks of kick-backs and cash grabs, does anyone really know who decides who is a Designated Medical Practitioner? And where does the medical fee go?
Solution: Scrap the medicals for spouses and dependent children. I understand there is a need to monitor people with contagious diseases such as HIV or TB, but a simple blood test covered by NHS would be ample proof that they are not endangering Canadians.
Third: Immigration forms
As a Canadian who has lived his entire life in Ontario, college education and with a decent background in English, I find the forms, guides, manuals that CIC provides next to impossible to decipher. It took almost two years from my wife and I's decision for her to immigrate to Canada to actually submit the forms to Vegreville, and much of that was pure confusion. We didn't know whether the medicals were to be submitted before or after we submitted the various applications. We didn't know whether my income was enough to meet the LICO requirement (turns out we are exempt from that too). Why? because they are literally buried in immigration manuals that if you didn't know they existed, you would never find a link for on the immigration website.
Please consolidate these forms, every form could be replaced by one generic form for sponsor and applicant(s), and category could be determined by a simple check box. Remove the legalese from the forms, take a look at any form from the United Kingdom for an example of how to make forms readable. They word their forms in simple english that even those of us without a bachelors degree specializing in immigration law can understand. Have every form go to a central intake, classify them there, if anything is missing let us know right away. give us our ECAS numbers upon receipt of the applications, and give us meaningful status updates.
Last: Fees.
Why are we being charged fees to submit a permanent residence application? Why the fees to sponsor? And why do the fees go up for every family member added to the application? When you sign your cheques notice they go to the Receiver General of Canada, in other words they go to the federal governments general income, for them to disperse however they see fit. The money does not go back to CIC to recover costs, it is basically a straight tax with the federal government pocketing the money. Please make the fees reasonable. I have paid taxes all my life and am tired of paying twice for government services.
If the process is being made deliberately difficult in order to 'weed out' people who aren't committed, I really doubt this is being achieved, rather all that is being achieved is ridiculous backlogs of cases from 9 months to years and years and years. If the government wants more immigration, and they have stated as much in hundreds of conferences and press releases, make it
My apologies if this upsets anyone or lowers the tone of this board in any way, I just get fed up with the attitude that 'this is how the Canadian Government wants things done, it must be right, just play along.' Sometimes it doesn't take much to effect change, a few well-written letters to the right people or social media groups have changed government policies before, many times. Hopefully all of you seeking to be Canadians will soon get your permanent residence status, and hopefully citizenship. When you do, please remember how hard it was and maybe work to change the horribly broken system that is Citizenship and Immigration Canada.
This is not meant to be a complaining post, just things that I would like to see happen, and things I may write to my MP about and try to affect some change in the system.
First off: Dual streams for applications.
Is there any real need to have inland vs. outland applications? It seems to me that there should be just one stream for each category of application. People living in Canada on visitors visa have the choice to apply inland or outland, this is something I did not know when me and my wife submitted our inland application. And now we are stuck with no right to appeal, no freedom to leave Canada, just because we decided to apply inland.
What is the purpose of this? Why not just have one single stream of family class applications, with the right to appeal? This will not create more problems for immigration canada, this will if anything speed up the process by allowing the offices to pool their resources instead of having two different sets of forms, two different sets of rules, dozens of offices around the world could be processing cases faster, and the folks up in Vegreville could maybe cut down on their processing time from the ridiculous figure of 9 months.
Second: Medical Examinations
Well, as most of us know, spouses and dependent children are exempt from medical requirements for admissability. So why do we have to spend upwards of $200 a person to examine nearly our entire family, even those who will never be coming to Canada? How many times have I seen posts where an ex-husband or ex-wife refuses to co-operate with getting kids medically examined? My wife is in this same situation herself. Her ex may or may not decide to take her kids in england to get their medical examinations, but since we have applied inland, she can't even leave the country to take her kids herself. And even though their examinations have no bearing whatsoever on their admissablity, failure to provide them means they can never, ever ever ever be sponsored. This smacks of kick-backs and cash grabs, does anyone really know who decides who is a Designated Medical Practitioner? And where does the medical fee go?
Solution: Scrap the medicals for spouses and dependent children. I understand there is a need to monitor people with contagious diseases such as HIV or TB, but a simple blood test covered by NHS would be ample proof that they are not endangering Canadians.
Third: Immigration forms
As a Canadian who has lived his entire life in Ontario, college education and with a decent background in English, I find the forms, guides, manuals that CIC provides next to impossible to decipher. It took almost two years from my wife and I's decision for her to immigrate to Canada to actually submit the forms to Vegreville, and much of that was pure confusion. We didn't know whether the medicals were to be submitted before or after we submitted the various applications. We didn't know whether my income was enough to meet the LICO requirement (turns out we are exempt from that too). Why? because they are literally buried in immigration manuals that if you didn't know they existed, you would never find a link for on the immigration website.
Please consolidate these forms, every form could be replaced by one generic form for sponsor and applicant(s), and category could be determined by a simple check box. Remove the legalese from the forms, take a look at any form from the United Kingdom for an example of how to make forms readable. They word their forms in simple english that even those of us without a bachelors degree specializing in immigration law can understand. Have every form go to a central intake, classify them there, if anything is missing let us know right away. give us our ECAS numbers upon receipt of the applications, and give us meaningful status updates.
Last: Fees.
Why are we being charged fees to submit a permanent residence application? Why the fees to sponsor? And why do the fees go up for every family member added to the application? When you sign your cheques notice they go to the Receiver General of Canada, in other words they go to the federal governments general income, for them to disperse however they see fit. The money does not go back to CIC to recover costs, it is basically a straight tax with the federal government pocketing the money. Please make the fees reasonable. I have paid taxes all my life and am tired of paying twice for government services.
If the process is being made deliberately difficult in order to 'weed out' people who aren't committed, I really doubt this is being achieved, rather all that is being achieved is ridiculous backlogs of cases from 9 months to years and years and years. If the government wants more immigration, and they have stated as much in hundreds of conferences and press releases, make it
My apologies if this upsets anyone or lowers the tone of this board in any way, I just get fed up with the attitude that 'this is how the Canadian Government wants things done, it must be right, just play along.' Sometimes it doesn't take much to effect change, a few well-written letters to the right people or social media groups have changed government policies before, many times. Hopefully all of you seeking to be Canadians will soon get your permanent residence status, and hopefully citizenship. When you do, please remember how hard it was and maybe work to change the horribly broken system that is Citizenship and Immigration Canada.
