Iranians facing higher delays for permanent residency than other nationalities

Amin Jafari Sojahrood says he felt at home right away in Canada after arriving from Iran to study biomedical physics.

He has since achieved many educational accolades, including winning a prestigious Vanier scholarship. Ivy league schools and high- profile institutions across the world have been trying to recruit him for years. But he loves Canada and wants to build a life here.

That’s why he says it has been heartbreaking to have found himself in limbo awaiting approval for permanent residency. He’s been waiting over a year for his application to be processed with no end in sight. And it’s all because he is from Iran.

“I feel very discriminated, I feel very singled out,” Sojahrood said, fighting back emotion.

“After living nine years of living in Canada and contributing so much, the worst part is that somebody looks at you like a threat.”

Sojahrood is not alone. Canada Border Services Agency reports that approximately 4,150 Iranians cases are pending security screening under temporary business streams and another 975 cases are pending for permanent residency.

The average security screening processing time for permanent residency applicants from Iran is 293 days, Marta Morgan, the deputy minister of immigration, told a Commons committee recently.

When contacted by the Canadian Press to determine why these cases are taking so long, the department of Public Safety took several days to craft a response.

When it did finally arrive, the Department spokesperson acknowledged that long wait times for applications can be frustrating, but that the reasons behind Iranian processing delays are varied and, generally, the “reality of processing times is complex and often misunderstood.”

“Processing times for permanent resident class applications for Iranian citizens has been longer than the international average for a number of years,” Scott Bardsley, Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale’s press secretary, said in an email.

“However, we have made significant improvements in the disparity between Iranian applications and those for citizens of all other countries.”

In 2015, the average wait time for Iranian permanent residency applications was 92 per cent longer than for citizens of all other countries. In 2017 the wait was 41 per cent longer.