Contrary to information posted on its website, the federal government is asking some visitors to submit a second visa application for Canada if their first had the misfortune to end up in the pile of unprocessed files during the pandemic. . A “queue” with an uncertain fate that causes many headaches.
“If you need to travel to Canada at this time, please note that a new application should be submitted. »
Immigration lawyer Denis Girard was surprised by the response sent to him by the Dakar visa office on December 13, 2021, when he wondered about the significant delay in issuing a visitor’s visa for a of its clients from Mali.
She wanted to come and visit her daughter and her grandchildren in Canada, a trip for which she made a request on the previous July 25. But now in this email, The duty consulted, the lady was asked without explanation to redo the process. It is that an important event has occurred in the meantime: Canada has reopened its borders to vaccinated travelers coming to the country for non-essential reasons.
Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) took the opportunity to throw all visa applications made before this date into a strange bureaucratic purgatory where thousands of files are stuck without their authors being informed. This has had the effect of inflating the wait statistics for obtaining a visa in some countries.
On its website, IRCC recommends people who submitted a visitor visa application before September 7, 2021 to submit a new one if their circumstances have changed. An instruction that perplexed Me Girard. “A new visa application does not seem to be required [pour ma cliente]if we trust the representations of IRCC, representations which will turn out to be false, ”underlines the lawyer, who notes a contradiction between the directive sent by email and what is found on the Web.
His client finally filed a new application, without reimbursement, for a visa which was produced 16 days later.
The duty attempted to obtain an explanation from IRCC regarding the requirement to file a new application. On five occasions, IRCC refused to say what its recommendation was for people who have not heard from them and whose situation has not changed, except for the impatience of the wait. The ministry copied each time the procedure for people whose situation has changed.
Lack of information
This lack of clarity causes a lot of uncertainty. Originally from Haiti, Michelet Joseph applied for a visitor visa in August 2021. He faced a dilemma: do it again, or not? “I don’t want to withdraw my request without being reimbursed. I maintain it, but the latter is not treated, ”he drops.
IRCC points out that “there is no money back guarantee” if a new application is filed.
The one who works as a journalist in Port-au-Prince, where “he earns a very good living”, wishes to come to Canada to meet artists from his country who perform on Canadian soil. “I need to know them to be able to talk about them,” he says. I’m hesitant to send an application again because I’ve already submitted a lot of documents and I don’t know if they receive them or put them aside. It’s frustrating. »
“I don’t know what to do,” said Natasha, who prefers to testify under an assumed name for fear of repercussions on her own immigration file. “If I file a new application, will it be abandoned again and we will be told the same things again? »
The Haitian student in Montreal is trying to bring her mother (who still lives in Haiti, but is a regular traveler to Canada) for her graduation ceremony in August. The duty confirmed that the visa application was registered a year in advance, on August 27, 2021, but Natasha has not heard from the file for 11 months. Processing times for a visa requested from Haiti are however estimated at 91 days, according to the IRCC website.
“The information, honestly, is not clear at all. No one can be reached, ”says the one who still does not know whether or not she should submit a new request for a visit from her mother.
A short history of a queue
Three diplomatic sources contacted separately confirmed that the backlog of visa applications is a problem for Canadian embassies. Two of them claim that officials from IRCC, the department that autonomously manages immigration files, told them outright that applications submitted before September 7, 2021 would never be processed.
Officially, the ministry says it continues to examine these old requests. But at the same time, it presents a somewhat reassuring portrait for those who have been waiting for their visa for almost a year.
First, the ministry suspended the processing of non-urgent requests between April and July 2020, while allowing the filing of files. “Those who requested to travel to Canada for non-essential reasons during this period have had their requests placed in the queue,” said IRCC spokesperson Julie Lafortune.
Then, and for the next 14 months, officials dealt primarily with applications from visitors exempt from travel restrictions. “A backlog of visitor visa applications has accumulated,” a ministry document bluntly admits.
Eventually, when travel restrictions were eased on September 7, 2021, IRCC decided that applications filed before that date would fall into that unfortunate “queue”, which has the characteristic of imposing much slower processing. The department cites the “complexity” of the files, such as outdated documents or changing circumstances.
IRCC also maintains that it always follows a “first in, first out” model, ie processing the oldest applications in the queue before the most recent ones; however, the department takes the liberty of dealing with less complex files first.
In 2021 alone, nearly 250,000 applications that IRCC has not been able to process have added to the queue. The majority of applications filed in 2022 have been processed.