Couples stymied by bureaucracy
Ottawa looks to speed up process after Canadians with foreign spouses hit by delays
For Jessica and Mauricio Vazquez, the road to a happy life together in Victoria has been bumpy.
The couple married in late 2013 and several months later applied for permanent resident status for Mauricio, who is from Mexico.
Two and a half years later, they are still waiting.
On Wednesday, the federal government offered some assurance that couples in their position in the future will not have to wait as long. Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada will now decide on most cases within a year, Immigration Minister John McCallum announced.
The changes apply to couples in which one person is a Canadian citizen or permanent resident and the other is a foreigner.
In cases where the foreign partner was overseas, it typically took 18 months for Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada to make a decision on a sponsorship, the department said Wednesday. In cases where both partners lived in Canada, the wait was 26 months and longer in some cases.
Jessica Vazquez applied to sponsor her husband in May 2014. They were in the midst of moving, and their application was returned to their old address, even though Vazquez said she provided the new one. It was months before they learned what happened. They then had to spend months assembling and translating the necessary documents to reapply. Their second application was received by the department in December 2015.
For most of this time Mauricio was legally unable to work, which took a psychological and a financial toll.
“It was putting a big strain on us ... we were at one point fighting to make $5 last so long to feed ourselves.”
In late 2014, the Conservative government introduced an open work permit pilot program for foreign spouses in Canada waiting for a decision on their permanent residence applications. Allowing Mauricio to work, Jessica said, has made a big difference in their lives.
In Wednesday’s announcement, the Liberal government extended this pilot program for another year.
The changes could also speed up the process for Vancouver resident Josh Solomon, whose wife and sixmonth-old son are waiting in Japan for her permanent resident status to come through.
Solomon’s wife, Iku, was a student who then got a job in Vancouver. Shortly before her work permit expired, she learned she was pregnant. The couple decided to have the baby in Japan, where Iku Solomon would have her family’s support. The baby was born in June and Solomon applied for permanent residence for his wife and son in September. He, too, had his application returned because of a missing signature and reapplied a month later. There have been other bureaucratic snags along the way, but Solomon said he hopes the new process will streamline things.
“It’s crushing,” he said of the separation. In hindsight, Solomon said he would have stayed in Japan or had his wife apply from Vancouver, but he’s afraid that if their living situation changed now, he’d have to reapply.
“We’re spending the first year of our son’s life with me saying hello over Skype.”