The doldrums

You know the doldrums - those latitudes near the equator where the winds rarely blow, where the still and the calm marooned sailors before the days of steam and diesel. Those are the latitudes of immigration at times for all of us who are sailing this particular ocean.

I was contacted last week by a man in New Delhi, India who was asking me about how long the process of immigration to Canada can take. I looked it up for him and discovered that for the New Delhi office, the standard - this is typical - wait, is 66 to 72 months. Without any of the complexities - if you had a rock-solid, no-problem immigration - five to six years.

It's no wonder some us feel lost at sea. Once we make a commitment to leave our home country and make a new home, it's like we've left port; we see our country diminish in the background, we see the new land in our hearts on the horizon and we ache to begin our lives there.

But until we know that we will be allowed to make our new lives where we have set our destination, we are at sea, and not knowing which way the wind will blow, or even if it ever will for us...these are our days in the doldrums.