Red tape leaves nurse in limbo

Another week, and we are greeted with another story about bewildering bureaucracy hindering a health-care professional's attempt to come to Atlantic Canada.

Tungum Ronglo, a nurse from New Delhi, India, has made numerous applications to Immigration Canada since 2019, but she and her badly needed nursing abilities have been left in limbo.

“I would love to be a nurse in P.E.I.," she told SaltWire over a Zoom call from New Delhi on

May 10.

“I have worked in the trauma operation centre, I have worked in the COVID care centre and I have worked in the pediatrics department. I can also be a general nurse. I have all of the experience."

Nova Scotia has recently updated its licensing requirements for internationally trained health-care workers to help address shortages. Since the changes at the beginning of May, the program has received more than 9,000 applications from internationally trained nurses.

While Nova Scotia sorts through those applications, Ronglo is waiting for the rubber stamp that gets her into neighbouring P.E.I.

She has every reason to keep trying, since her husband lives in Charlottetown.

Ronglo and Desmond Davies met in India and began dating almost 10 years ago. In 2019, Desmond proposed and the couple made plans to move to P.E.I., where Davies assured his fiancé her nursing background would be welcomed.

Ronglo applied for a visitor's visa to see her intended home of P.E.I. but delays, partly due to COVID-19 restrictions, plagued the application until it was eventually rejected.

According to the Consulate General of India in Canada, the typical processing time for an Indian national applying for a Canadian tourist visa is 30 days. After waiting for three years, the couple married in India in July 2022.

Charlottetown MP Sean Casey told SaltWire that Immigration Canada rejected Ronglo's application in part because her marriage to Davies made it unlikely she would return to her home country.

“It doesn't make any sense to me," said Davies, now back in

P.E.I. and waiting for his partner to be able to join him. “At the end of it, we got married because we were tired of waiting.”

Now, Casey says, the couple will have to submit more applications. Davies will have to sponsor his wife as a permanent resident while Ronglo will have to apply as a temporary resident. If that seems contradictory, Casey says that's the way the bureaucracy works.

"The spousal sponsorship would be for her to come permanently. Then, the visitor's permit would be looked at in a different light given that they are crystal clear on her intent to stay on a permanent basis."

While this stupefying officialdom plays out, wasting civil servants' time and taxpayers' money, Health P.E.I. has hundreds of full-time nursing positions sitting vacant and hundreds more nurses set to retire.

If Nova Scotia can process 9,000 international nursing applications, perhaps Immigration Canada can fast-track this one for P.E.I.