Would-be immigrants poised to hear about application backlog
Dong Wang has waited almost six years for his immigration dream to be fulfilled. This week, he and 900 other applicants will find out from a Canadian court if their long wait has been in vain.
The 33-year-old native of the Chinese city of Dalian applied to immigrate to Canada in 2006. He has been put through an emotional rollercoaster since he joined a lawsuit last November against Ottawa for warehousing backlogged immigration applications and failing to process them in a timely fashion.
In February, Wang got a letter from Immigration saying his application had been assessed and he and his wife should prepare the necessary documents, take the English language test and get a medical exam.
“We were all excited and full of hope after waiting for so long and so much effort we had made,” said Wang, an executive with an international hotel management group.
The bomb dropped in March when Immigration Minister Jason Kenney announced a new law to clear the immigration backlog of 280,000 applicants. Bill C-38 would come into effect June 29.
In April, the couple got a “stop-submit” letter from Immigration. “Please ignore our recent request to submit full application forms and supporting documentation,” it read. “This office will not put your application into process. We will contact you . . . regarding refund of the processing fees.”
Last month, just before Bill C-38 became law, the Federal Court ruled on the case of the 900-plus applicants, saying the government must expedite the processing of the backlogged applications.
But on June 29, Citizenship and Immigration Canada stated that all applications filed before February 2008, when new selection criteria were introduced by Kenney, would be terminated.
“We’re really disappointed and sad,” Wang told the Star from China.
Tim Leahy, lawyer for the 900 litigants, is taking one last shot, asking the court to direct Immigration to assess their cases under humanitarian and compassionate grounds. Justice Robert Barnes is expected to deliver his decision this week.
Litigant Justin Pang, 30, who filed his application from Beijing six years ago, hopes the court will make a fair and sensible decision to get them justice, given the backlog isn’t the making of the applicants but the Canadian government.
“I have done everything I could that they asked me to, but finally they only gave me one letter to deny all the efforts I’ve made,” said the Tsinghua University graduate, an IT manager for a Fortune 500 company in Beijing.
http://www.thestar.com/news/investi...ants-poised-to-hear-about-application-backlog
Dong Wang has waited almost six years for his immigration dream to be fulfilled. This week, he and 900 other applicants will find out from a Canadian court if their long wait has been in vain.
The 33-year-old native of the Chinese city of Dalian applied to immigrate to Canada in 2006. He has been put through an emotional rollercoaster since he joined a lawsuit last November against Ottawa for warehousing backlogged immigration applications and failing to process them in a timely fashion.
In February, Wang got a letter from Immigration saying his application had been assessed and he and his wife should prepare the necessary documents, take the English language test and get a medical exam.
“We were all excited and full of hope after waiting for so long and so much effort we had made,” said Wang, an executive with an international hotel management group.
The bomb dropped in March when Immigration Minister Jason Kenney announced a new law to clear the immigration backlog of 280,000 applicants. Bill C-38 would come into effect June 29.
In April, the couple got a “stop-submit” letter from Immigration. “Please ignore our recent request to submit full application forms and supporting documentation,” it read. “This office will not put your application into process. We will contact you . . . regarding refund of the processing fees.”
Last month, just before Bill C-38 became law, the Federal Court ruled on the case of the 900-plus applicants, saying the government must expedite the processing of the backlogged applications.
But on June 29, Citizenship and Immigration Canada stated that all applications filed before February 2008, when new selection criteria were introduced by Kenney, would be terminated.
“We’re really disappointed and sad,” Wang told the Star from China.
Tim Leahy, lawyer for the 900 litigants, is taking one last shot, asking the court to direct Immigration to assess their cases under humanitarian and compassionate grounds. Justice Robert Barnes is expected to deliver his decision this week.
Litigant Justin Pang, 30, who filed his application from Beijing six years ago, hopes the court will make a fair and sensible decision to get them justice, given the backlog isn’t the making of the applicants but the Canadian government.
“I have done everything I could that they asked me to, but finally they only gave me one letter to deny all the efforts I’ve made,” said the Tsinghua University graduate, an IT manager for a Fortune 500 company in Beijing.
http://www.thestar.com/news/investi...ants-poised-to-hear-about-application-backlog
