Requests

Still no news on the immigration front. It's now got to the point where a trip home for Christmas is beginning to look unlikely since the time required to get my passport to LA and back will probably be a couple of weeks. That's if I got a request pretty quick.As has been mentioned before, quick is seemingly not a word in the lexicon of an immigration official. Unless you happened to apply after November 2010.

To see what on earth's going on, under freedom of information laws I've requested a printout of my electronic immigration file (essentially a screengrab of my file) this afternoon. I want to know all manner of things including a) have they received my medical results and the permanent residence fee, b) have they completed the background/security check, and c) what on earth else it is they are waiting for. I suspect I'm going to find something like they requested an RCMP police check or similar months ago and Canada Post lost it or something. It's typical of the sclerotic immigration system in this country that while my case is in LA, I have to submit this request to Ottawa. This is pretty much my only recourse at the moment since my enqiury to them last week has been met with stony silence, emails bounce off them and there is no telephone number to ring. Also, there appears to be no way of making complaints either.

I just find it beyond unfair that this week, there have been applicants who applied eight, nine, and more than ten months after I did had their passport requests, while I sit here, savings whittling away, career in the bin. The sum of money that I saved to live off while in this situation will probably run out at the end of January and I'm not willing to spend any more of my savings after that; that sum was once upon a time earmarked for a deposit on a house/flat, a car and so on. You know, the sort of things you can do when you have a life.

Weekend Update (2)

Immigration Update

There's no way to dress it up; being unemployed whilst in government immigation limbo isn't much fun. There's only so much daytime TV a man can stand, and while walks outside are nice enough, there are only so many different permutations of walks in the local area. And of course, in a few weeks it could very well be snowing outside. Ugh. Any news, anything at all of the cases at the Los Angeles consulate will get my immediate attention.

So as a follow up to doing my immigration medicals in mid-August, I emailed the medical practice yesterday to enquire what date my results were sent to Ottawa. I'd read a couple of scare stories on the discussion forum from people whose results had been mislaid by their doctors. That's the last thing that I'd want. A reply came fairly quickly this morning that they got my results on September 1st which was 4 weeks yesterday.  The immigration website that I follow to gauge how much longer it'll take had been remarkably quiet in the last 24 hours, until I checked back in just now and saw the lower of the two highlighted cases was a case from LA. That person had their results sent on August 29th and had a passport request yesterday. His/her medical results arrived in Ottawa two days before mine were. Hopefully, my case will be resolved very soon. Because I'll go pretty mad if there's another couple of months wait.