A wealthy businessman from Texas, who has just invested $4 million with us to build his life in French here, has been waiting for his Immigration Canada file number for 18 months.
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“I submitted the documents to the federal government in July 2020. It is February 2022. I have been waiting 18 months. I still don’t have a permanent number to see my status in the federal system,” laments Alberto Valera, a wealthy American investor, in love with Quebec, who has taken up residence here.
Texaco, HP, Capital One… Before arriving in the country, Alberto Valera enriched himself by occupying important positions in large firms.
“In 2009, I retired from these big companies. I decided to go into business with my wife with our own real estate investment firm as well as the sale and resale of businesses,” he explains.
Eight years later, faced with the gloomy political climate in the United States, he decided to take the plunge and sell a good part of his portfolio assets in Austin, the capital of Texas (hotels, mini-businesses) to come and redo his life with us.
“Quebec was the place where we wanted to live, because of its culture, its mentality, which resembles us, its diversity of cultures and its European charm”, continues the entrepreneur, who has since been learning French intensively with his wife. and her 35-year-old daughter in the Quebec metropolis.
Selected by Quebec
However, despite obtaining his Certificat de Sélection du Québec (CSQ), and the fact that he wants to grow one of his baby items businesses here, Alberto Valera comes up against bureaucracy and deadlines. immigration Canada.
“So far, we have invested a good $4 million in Quebec, but we want to stabilize our immigration status so as not to be worried from one year to the next,” explains the entrepreneur, who does not rule out no more having to leave the country in the coming months if he does not manage to obtain his permanent residence.
For lawyer Laurence Trempe, of EXEO Avocats, who knows the workings of the bureaucratic machine well, Alberto’s case is far from isolated.
“His eligibility has already been made by Quebec with the famous Quebec Selection Certificate (CDSQ), so at the federal level, it’s purely criminal and medical checks. We are in the administrative clerical”, she illustrates.
According to the lawyer, since the pandemic, paper files have ended up in “limbo”, which has turned the lives of immigrants on the alert upside down.
“At the moment, the processing times for this type of request are 65 months at the federal level”, concludes the one who no longer counts files of this type on her large desk.
– With the collaboration of Marie Christine Trottier
► Monday, The newspaper asked Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada how many files in total are pending across the country and in Quebec, but the answer is still pending.