Spousal Sponsorship Delays

jayatii wrote:

In July 2012 I submitted an application to sponsor my husband to Canada. Having lived with my husband in his home country for three years we decided it would be best for me to return to Canada to process the application as it would be faster or so we thought. At the time of filing our application, processing times for the second step were estimated at 9 months. In September 2012 I was approved to sponsor. We assumed that around June 2013 my husband would be here. When checking CIC processings times however we noticed a change of 12 months instead of 9 months. We started getting really confused about when it was a good time to call about delays and called CIC to find out about the delay. They told me in October 2013 our file would be considered delayed due to new wait times. I went to visit my husband in October 2013 and when I came back called immigration for an update. I was essentially told to follow up with immigration in my husband's country. Of course when I called there, an answering machine told me to call Canada. Finally in an argument with immigration over the fact that CIC was failing to provide status reports other than receiving the file in July 2012, and that I couldnt find someone to speak to for an update, a very rude and condescending immigration person on the phone suggested I contact my local MP. In November 2013 I contacted my MP. The first thing we were told was that they were not delayed because they had not received our file at the time indicated in the letter we received back in Sep 2012 and that they had until December 2013 to make a decision. They said the would be starting on our medicals and then the background check. End of November we were told our medicals were complete and they were moving on to background check.

By this time we are very excited thinking my husband will celebrate xmas here in Canada. Second week of December we are told that we have to do medicals again, they are expired and then they can't find them anyway and something about us not sending In our medicals. I think my MP's assistant is more confused than us I think so I quickly google and see that they changed the medical procedure September 2012 to an online system which was two months after we filed our application. Of course no one told us that and our MP says that immigration will call me in January 2014 to explain!!!! So I have my husband redo his medicals which we give to our MP a week ago and still have not received that call from Immigration asking us to redo medicals that we have already redone!!!

Now that my MP refers to Immigration in my husband's country as his colleagues and the that they have made it clear that our file is not a priority, I am loosing hope. The stress is crippling and I cannot see the future anymore.

There is no guarantee a qualified, experienced immigration lawyer can make the difference, but obtaining the assistance of a lawyer is probably the best recourse available beyond simply waiting for CIC to do its thing.

You can also make a formal Access to Information request, for personal information; there are links at the CIC web pages for doing this. I am not sure what you can personally obtain this way regarding your partner unless you have specific authority to act as your partner's respesentative and authority in particular to obtain personal information. Even if you obtain both, yours and your partner's information, I am not sure whether that will reveal what problems there are. Given the timeline, it appears there may be some problem, that this is not a routine case, but so far it is not such a lengthy timeline overall that it is certain there is a problem.

Patience for awhile longer may be the prudent course, and if it goes past two years then dig into your pockets for funds to obtain the assistance of legal counsel. (Not a consultant; better to go to a recognized, reputable, licensed lawyer.)

Regarding timelines in general
Note that the timelines posted by CIC are merely reports, based on how long it took to process a specified percentage of similar applications in a specified time period. (CIC is currently displaying timelines for the October 1, 2012 to September 30, 2013 period.) These timelines are not predictions, let alone definitive parameters, for how long any particular case will be. How long a particular case takes is very specific to that case.

If you got your timeline information directly from the CIC web pages, that was based on 80 percent of similar applications for that visa office. Most applications are processed in significantly less time than that. I have not checked the Canadian government's open data site recently, but I believe it is still showing timeline information for sponsorship applications based on how long it took to process 50 percent of the applications, which is much closer to what most applicants experience, and in general has historically been almost half as long as it take for 80 percent.

So, if yours has gone well past the timeline shown for 80 percent, that indicates a problem, something which is not routine, affecting the timeline. Although, as I said above, your timeline is not so long as to for sure indicate there is a serious problem and waiting awhile longer may be a prudent course of action for now.

There is no guarantee that even a lawyer will be able to find out just what the problem is (if there is a particular problem), but that is probably your one best approach . . . again, other than just waiting it out and seeing what happens.

The possibilities are so many, it is foolish to even venture a guess as to what may be the hold up. That said, the security background check is one of those things which can hold up a particular individual's application for a long time. Most individuals who will run into an inordinate processing time due to a delay in obtaining the clearance from CSIS (security background check) have a good idea what that is about, even if they adamantly disagree about the merits of it. That does not mean you know, depending, of course, on just how thorough your knowledge about your partner's history is.

Regarding the assistance of a MP
The value of assistance provided by a MP's office varies; they have no direct or overt authority, and even if zealous they are often limited to being a source of information, not a means of inducing action . . . although over time we have seen some reports which suggest, on occasion, the intervention of the MP's office has been instrumental in moving these kinds of cases along.

In any event, your contact with the MP's office was probably the right thing to do. The amount of benefit from doing this is hard to discern because not only is there a lot of variation in what various MPs will actually do (and with the current government, it appears that which party your MP belongs to can make a difference in how effective he or she can be . . . it is a sad state of affairs when partisanship affects the services a Canadian can expect from his or her representatives in the government), there is a great deal of variation in what can be accomplished in particular cases. Leading to the observation that it is nearly impossible to identify what the real problems are in your case in the abstract because there are so many variables which, in turn, are tied to all the variable specific factors in play, ranging from the particulars of the individuals involved, including history/backgrounds as well as those directly related to the relationship itself, to factors related to the visa office processing the application.

As I said initially, there is no guarantee a qualified, experienced immigration lawyer can make the difference, but it is probably the best recourse available beyond simply waiting for CIC to do its thing. Only with a licensed lawyer can you sit down and in strict confidence go over all the details, show your copy of everything that was submitted to CIC, your copy of all communications with CIC, and obtain a frank, detailed assessment of the status of the case along with advice about what to anticipate, what you can do, what recourse is available. But, yes, that can be expensive.