The Star - Immigration waiting times cause frustration

I guess I'm not the only person frustrated by long wait times. The people in the article by Nicholas Keung of the Toronto Star, are seeking to bring parents and grandparents into the country. For some overseas applications, the process can take 15-33 months as reported.

But wait - that's AFTER the standard prescreeneing period. And how long does that period last? According to the CIC,there is a 38-month standard prescreening of the sponsors at immigration’s Mississauga processing centre. So now we are talking about wait times ranging from 53 to 71 months.

For those of you without immigration math skills, that's 4-years and 3-months to 5-years 11-months.

It also means at least two medical exams will need to be submitted (they are only good for a year) and other reports, like police clearances, may need to be submitted at least twice.

The Star article is just another tale of a poorly run ministry. What does Jason Kenney have to say about it? “Canadian visa offices from one country to another can vary significantly in regard to the size and nature of their respective workloads and it is impossible to provide the exact same level of service at every visa office,” Immigration Minister Jason Kenney’s office wrote in an email to Zhang’s group, according to The Star article.

Nonsense - Kenney could work to insure that the levels of service were comparable at Canadian visa offices. He chooses not to use his budget that way, however. Instead, he uses it for more important things - high profile globetrotting to preach the Tory line on illegal immigration.

The more you know about the current state of the CIC, the less you want to know.

Read the entire article here.