Backlog puts newcomers in limbo
OTTAWA — The closure of a visa office in upstate New York last spring has meant extra long delays for thousands of increasingly cashstrapped would-be permanent residents and Canada could risk losing the very immigrants it wants most.
International students and foreign workers — young, educated newcomers with socalled Canadian experience, the kind of people Canada’s revamped immigration system is increasingly keen to court — comprise the vast majority of the nearly 10,000 files that were transferred to Ottawa from Buffalo, N.Y.
Some say they have waited as many as two years for their papers while they watched others who applied later get their permanent residency before them. A number of them are now on the hook for expensive new medical tests since their previous ones expired, while others are growing desperate as their savings runs out.
“I AM JOBLESS AND LOOKING TO FIND A JOB. JUST SPENDING MY PERSONAL SAVINGS.”
ALIREZA SABERI
Many self-described “forgotten ones of Buffalo” have even taken to Facebook to voice their concerns and swap status updates.
Alireza Saberi, a 28-yearold McGill University elec- trical engineering graduate from Iran, is one of the organizers. He estimates he’s among some 4,000 students and recent grads in the Montreal area now in limbo.
“I am jobless and looking to find a job. Just spending my personal savings,” said Saberi, who applied to the federal skilled worker program after getting approval from Quebec in December 2011, about a year after he graduated.
He received a postgraduate permit that allows him to work and has applied to high-tech companies like Cisco Systems and Qualcomm, but each time it’s the same refrain.
“I passed the qualification but it’s the last level of HR where they request you to be a permanent resident at least,” he said. “By default, I was rejected.”
Canada closed its Buffalo visa office in May after announcing foreign students and workers living in Canada would no longer have to leave the country to renew a visa or apply for permanent residency. About 9,508 permanent residency applications and 700 temporary resident applications were packed up and sent to a new office in Ottawa for processing.
When the office closed, processing times were around 15 months, though Lariviere said new files in Ottawa will take only nine months to be finalized. He said the Buffalo backlog should be completed by next summer.
Tuesday, NDP immigration critic Jinny Sims said: “… My fear is we’re going to have people not trusting their government and beginning to look somewhere else for places to go to.”