Express my ass

Mr. O is having great fun trying to obtain his certificate of good conduct from the U.A.E. police. Here's a taste: The only system of addresses in Abu Dhabi for mail is a P.O. box system. When you live there you get in a taxi and say "Hyundai Showroom," not "123 Main Street." Street addresses are a relative science, and that's just the way it is. Hence the P.O boxes.

However, FedEx express courier ($150 worth, neveryoumind) requires a signature to deliver a package, so dropping it in the P.O. Box isn't apparently an option. They called Mr. O on Saturday after trying to deliver it three times (Thursday, Friday, Saturday), asking if there was any other number they could try. Of course, Thursday afternoon and Friday are known as The Weekend in that part of the world, and it would appear that there's some kind of larger holiday going on, which would explain the inability to get through. Why they don't just get the janitor to sign it and drop it in the PO box is beyond me.

The bitch of it is, this is the last piece we need for his PR application to be complete, and it's already taken six months, including our own procrastination. Once we got the OWP we were, as far as daily life goes, home free, but now I'd really just like to get the damn thing over with and get on with my life. We have no idea how long the processing will take on their end, but if delivery itself is this complicated...well, inshallah the rest of it is less of a gong show.

Dog days

We've gotten pretty complacent these last few months, since Mr. O's open work permit came in. It is summer after all, and at this point any official accreditation he gets feels like just more paperwork and rubber stamping - our quality of life won't change much from here to there - which only serves to underline my basic argument that spouses of citizens should be granted open work permits from the outset, and the system would run a lot smoother for everyone. This blog probably wouldn't exist.

So in true summer fashion I'm not only lazy with posting but also with following what's been going on in the latest round in our little immigration game: Mr. O got his legalized fingerprint form back from the U.A.E. embassy in Ottawa last week, and so he'll now have to send that and a copy of his old residence permit and passport to the Ministry of Interior in Dubai. There are also some fees which he needs to "contact them" about - and the site is also a bit vague on the timelines, as they recommend getting "a friend" in Dubai to help you out with the forms to speed up the process. When we lived there Mr. O's Finnish employer had a local Arabic-speaking fixer to take care of such things, but we have no such connection now.

Of course, with all our easy summer dawdling, the permanent residency process is delayed even further - nothing will move until he gets his certificate of good conduct back from the Emirati government and into the hands of the CIC.

He also has to renew his OHIP card, which he tried to do the other day but there must have been some kind of big deadline because the line at Service Canada was out the door, so he'll have to go back. Wouldn't it be nice if the government's many heads could talk to each other, and they could confirm that his permit had been extended (say, in a database somewhere) and just mail him a new card? Because lines suck, especially in August.

Tra la la la, off to the cottage...

I heart Heather Mallick

CBC columnista extraordinaire Heather Mallick pulls a strip off the hairy back of Canadian propaganda aimed at new and prospective immigrants by equating this booklet with a national personals ad. God dammit woman, could you be more brilliant?

Case in point:

I rather adore Canada, and at times when I am at Wickaninnish in British Columbia or skiing at Lake Louise, Alta., or eating Nova Scotia oysters or drinking a Bloody Caesar (Canadian invention), I am actively in love with it. But at no time do I think we are God's gift to humanity. What arse would say it, or worse, believe it?

And again:

The booklet says Canadian values include equality (ask Muslim-Canadians now regularly referred to in newspapers as "brown-skinned"), freedom (ask a pregnant woman running the Christian-right gauntlet at a Fredericton abortion clinic), peacekeeping (ask a soldier fighting a pointless war in Afghanistan), and law and order (ask those Muslim-Canadian teenagers on trial for terrorism instead of adolescence).

And again:

For the sky is always blue as a jay in this land of moral and personable people devoted to their "parliamentary democracy," unstinting in their "environmentally sound" stewardship of the "clean and prosperous" country that their children will live in, speaking as one in their respect for "cultural differences" and their faith in "international peacekeeping."

No, seriously.

I'm not mocking the federal government's rendition of national perfection for the vulnerable immigrants most likely to fall for it. I understand the impulse. Canada needs skilled immigrants. It's the economic version of dating angst like, "Gosh, if we could just hook up with an emerging tech nation who has relatives who do plumbing on the side."

Bring on the open work

Between six and seven weeks later, Mr. O's open work permit arrived today. This means he can quit his job and/or take another one without having to reapply. It's good for one year. Yeah! (He had a bit of a scare, actually, in that he almost let his residence permit expire before getting his OWP application in. Tip: always have one ball in play.)

In other permit news, his application to get a police report from the U.A.E. is moving more slowly. Actually it hasn't moved anywhere since the fingerprints; it's sitting on our kitchen table. But what the hell, it's summer. Anyone with half a soul can't do paperwork in the summertime. Ciao.

$5.25 a finger

Mr. O is going to get his fingerprints, um, taken (?) at the Toronto Police Service today. He called and they told him "they've given these services to private companies" in the past. He needs two pieces of ID and $52.50. Then he can ship these off to Abu Dhabi where they can compare them with the prints they took when he got his work permit there. (It could be worse, I suppose: the Emirati government took an iris scan, too.)

Time off for good conduct

Mr. O sent in his application for an open work permit before we left for holidays at the end of May. Current processing time is 40 days, so we're not expecting to hear anything before July. It's unclear if we need to reapply for a temporary residence permit despite the AIP, so we'll have to call CIC to check on that. It's just that it's summer and so easy to get lazy...

To proceed with the actual permanent residence card, Mr. O needs to get a Certificate of Good Conduct and police check from the Abu Dhabi government, as he lived there for more than six months in the past 10 years. As part of the process, he has to be fingerprinted by the police here, which is, as he says, "kinda creepy."

That's nothing compared to the Brazil-esque (again, the movie, not the country) process of obtaining forms in Abu Dhabi. I remember when Mr. O went in to get his UAE driver's licence; we had our own personal Arabic-speaking fix-it guy and it still took us several trips. From the above link:

We suggest that you send the documents to a friend and your friend can obtain the certificate from the Police Department on your behalf so the processing time will be faster than sending it directly by courier to the Police Department.

Since we have few "friends" left down there (the Finnish satellite office Mr. O worked at is now closed), we aren't sure how long this will take.

P.s. The trip over the border and back again was uneventful. We got lucky with our officers, I guess, as they were all very friendly while others had more of a time of it. Hooray for being white.

Down with the OWP

So after waiting patiently for me to renew my passport (my previous one, barely used, was not machine-readable, for some reason unexplained by the Canadian consulate in Helsinki, and so no good for visiting the U.S.), Mr. O shipped off his app for his open work permit this week. He's not feeling good about crossing the border, but we've been assured that his passport and work permit together are sufficient. I've stowed away the numbers of two different immigration lawyers, just in case. You never know.

I have no idea how long it will take to get the OWP back, and don't really care. It's summer, after all, and Mr. O's current papers give him residence rights till August. Without tempting the bureaucracy gods, we should be okay.

Other than that, there hasn't been a lot going on on the ungrateful immigrant front, hence the lack of posts. Although, I happened to meet a civil servant from the CIC at a bar a few weeks back, which was inneresting...I asked him about immigration officers' educational requirements and he said that they can range from your basic GED all the way up to a degree in immigration law. We also agreed that the officers at the border are scarily young. AND **he offered me a tour of a CIC office** which, seeing as I have no contact info for him, was likely just a gesture of friendliness, but hey, if you're reading this...callllll meeee! I will leak your info anytime! Quid pro quo, baby.

Good news via snail mail

On vapunaatto both Mr. O and I got letters from the CIC. Mine congratulated me on being accepted as a sponsor, while his informed him he was now able to apply for an open work permit, and requested a police report from the UAE (where we spent seven months a few years ago), which can be obtained through that country's embassy in Ottawa.

This comes just in time, as we were starting to think Mr. O was going to have to push his employer to renew his temporary work visa before he could even apply for the OWP. Of course, we're feeling a bit lazy and haven't actually filled in the forms yet. But it's nice to know we can.

Only one small gripe: the letter was dated March 31. How it took a month to get from Ottawa to Toronto, we'll never know.

Hardly news

Canadians are a racist lot, confirmed once again by a poll reported in the Globe and Mail today. According to the article, over 60% of people here (of undefined ethnic origin) feel that Canada makes too many "accommodations" for minorities. (Cuz you know, after they roll out the red carpet at CIC, there are headhunters and real estate agents throwing jobs and homes at everybody.)

The reasoning behind this is revealed in the answers to further questions, such as the 45% of people who feel immigrants "hold onto their own customs for too long." While 65% of people who live in Canadian cities feel that diversity enriches society, this is also an essentially selfish view, as if the only purpose for the presence of minorities is to make the lives of "real" Canadians better. This is so depressing, I don't even think I can rant about it.

Do you feel lucky?

Those of you who participated in the papers pool are now drooling with anticipation, I know. I should make a correction, though, because when I set the estimate at around 6 to 7 months, I was actually referring to the time to the AIP rather than the actual landing date, which we now know will come much later. Mr. O noticed this right away and changed his bet, but since we are not immigration lawyers and can't be expected to understand all this double speak, rather than postponing the pool or making you all bet again, I thought I'd just reword it to the above. So the same dates still stand for the AIP letter, and for those who haven't bet, there's still time!

Pick me!

It seems as if the government is moving closer to passing Bill C-31, the amendments to the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act it proposed last month. The system aims to decrease backlog (though it only applies to applications received after Feb 2008) and fast-track those applicants who have the skills most needed in the Canadian labour market.

Speaking of backlog, in the CIC FAQ on the topic I found this interesting tidbit, answering a nagging question:

...just before the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act was implemented in 2002, there was a flood of applications from people who wanted to get their applications in before the new rules took effect.

It seems that this applies to the skilled worker class only, in which it can currently take up to, wait for it, 68 months. In theory, anything to reduce this wait will be a good thing, and setting annual limits would help stop the strain on resources (because as nice as it is to let everybody in, what's the point if we're not going to back it up with money?) but I'm suspicious of the Conservatives and how they might play this (a stripper ban?). Critics say that this will block people who are coming to be reunited with their families, and it remains to be seen if resources from family class will be diverted or if the money promised to immigration will cover new resources. It's also unclear how those doctors and other badly needed professionals will be integrated once they arrive...how's about a bill on that, boys?

Just when you've given up hope entirely...

You get this in your mailbox, a month ahead of schedule:

We received your application for permanent residence on October 29, 2007.

We started processing your application on November 26, 2007.

Medical results have been received.

A decision has been made and you will be contacted.

How cryptic and tantalizing is that?! Is it possible that after all this lateness they might be fucking early?! I hardly dare to consider...

It has been that kind of day. Mr. O's boss called him in today to negotiate his permanent contract, and gave him all kinds of compliments and even a bit of space to vent. Bottom line: he's got a good offer coming. So IF the above is in fact the impending AIP and not a swift kick out the door, that would save us yet another round of temporary visa paperwork. Which is a good thing.

When a reply isn't a reply at all

Dear Carey Toane,

I am replying to your e-mail of February 23, 2008, addressed to the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration, concerning open work permits for spouses of Canadian Citizens.

As you know, an applicant in the Spouse or Common-law Partner in Canada Class is not eligible to apply for a work permit until he or she has received notification that his or her application has been approved in principle. This restriction is supported by the Immigration and Refugee
Protection Act and Regulations (IRPA).

Pursuant to sub-section 207 of IRPA, a work permit may be issued to a foreign national in Canada who is a member of the Spouse or Common-law Partner in-Canada Class. Given that it is permissible to issue a work permit only to a member of this class, Section 124 of the Regulations state which foreign nationals may be considered to be a member of this
class. This regulation states that a member: must be a spouse or common-law partner of a sponsor and cohabit will that sponsor in Canada, must have temporary resident status in Canada and, must be the subject of a sponsorship application.

In order to determine whether or not an applicant is a member of the Spouse or Common-law Partner in-Canada Class, officials at the Case Processing Centre in Vegreville, Alberta must examine those three elements. The mere fact of making an application in this class does not
make someone a member of the class. This determination can only be made by Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC) after officials have verified the status of the applicant, including verification of his or her marital status and the bona fides of the relationship.

This requirement is in place in order to protect the integrity of both the Spouse or Common-law Partner Program and the Temporary Foreign Worker Program. If the mere fact that an application had been made in Canada could entitle a person to a work permit, this might lead to abuse of the system. It would allow applicants to "self-select" as temporary
workers simply by filing an application as a sponsored spouse or partner.

Canada permits the recruitment of foreign workers with skills that are in short supply in Canada only when such employment will not adversely affect the employment or career opportunities of Canadian citizens and permanent residents. This policy also recognizes that the admission of such workers to Canada helps create or maintain employment for Canadian
citizens and permanent residents, provides training or the transfer of specialized knowledge to the domestic work force, and helps strengthen a company's competitive position in the international marketplace.

In most cases, foreign nationals wishing to work in Canada must have confirmation of the job offer (positive labour market opinion) from Human Resources and Social Development Canada (HRSDC). HRSDC plays an important role in evaluating the need for foreign workers by assisting employers in their human resources planning, including determining if and when foreign workers are required. HRSDC assesses the employer's efforts to consider Canadian workers and the adequacy of compensation offered. It considers the adverse labour market effects of hiring a foreign worker. Employers applying for confirmations of job offers are
also encouraged to adopt strategies for training and hiring Canadian workers.

It takes time to process immigration applications. Priority is given to spouses, common-law or conjugal partners, and dependent children, together with Convention refugees seeking resettlement in Canada. Family class applications constitute the majority of immigrant
applications in many of our visa offices. This, coupled with the fact that visa officers continue to receive a high volume of applications in other categories, may result in temporary backlogs in some categories.

The Department is actively pursuing both administrative and potential legislative and regulatory tools to improve inventory management.

It is always in the client's best interests to apply abroad in the prescribed manner, if possible. There are distinct disadvantages to applying from within Canada, including noticeably longer processing times, lack of status, inability to work and ineligibility for provincial health insurance coverage. The immigration offices in Canada were originally created to deal with genuine visitors and persons in the enforcement stream; visa offices are responsible for selecting immigrants and issuing temporary resident visas.

When your husband's application for permanent residence is assessed and receives approval in principle, he can apply from within Canada for an open work permit. Until that time, if he wishes to work in Canada, he is required to follow the normal process: obtain a job offer
confirmation by Human Resources and Social Development Canada and apply for a work permit at a visa office. For more details on the work permit process, please visit our Web site at www.cic.gc.ca, or contact our Call Centre at 1-888-242-2100.

Thank you for taking to write. I trust that you will find this information of assistance.

This electronic address is not available for reply.

It's all about the paper

Mr. O's permit, dated March 13, arrived yesterday in the mail. It's good for three months, i.e. till June 13, which means we won't have any trouble coming back from our holiday in the States at the beginning of June. (Hey, it's always nice when your country of residence lets you back in.) Now we can direct our energies to the same things you nice people do, like uneducated clients and moody coworkers and TTC troubles. Hooray! Approaching normal!

I have had a hard time keeping my cool over the last little while as all of this has gone on. On one hand I'm as anxious/pissed/frustrated/worried/fed up as Mr. O (we do live together and love each other, after all) and on the other hand, I haven't had the same trouble he's had with things like getting a decent paycheque, getting around the city, etc. etc., and so sometimes I feel like he's exaggerating the problem or focusing only on the negative or simply justifying his desire to go home. I've totally blown it on at least one occasion, and I know overall I could have been more sympathetic. I guess this is a learning process for both of us...

I think I'm giving up my old ideas on why people move here in the first place. It's NOT because they get or think they'll get a better deal than they get at home. That's simply not true. There are a thousand different reasons why people might move here, and one of the biggest ones can be summarized as "other people," be them family or community or what-have-you. In other words, people come here because other people have come here before them.

Interestingly, Mr. O's new permit specifies that he has to leave the country by August, which is based on his original one-year permit. It will be interesting to see what our one-year reassessment will bring. Will we stay? In the meantime, we still have the actual residence permit to deal with. Hopefully it comes and he can apply for his open permit before his current temp permit expires, which would save us another round of papers with his employer (I know, the last one was just so much fun). But I'm not holding my breath.

Oh - another fun thing about moving: taxes! We get to do two sets for 2007 - Canadian and Finnish. I sent in our Cdn returns today after just one phone call to the international tax office, and it seems I will be getting some money back, which will go some way to replenish our "immigration debt" which is primarily owed to ourselves. A weekend trip, maybe? We shall see. The tax forms and process with the big fat guide, etc. made me all nostalgic for our PR application. Canadian bureaucratic jargon is such a rich, multifarious register. So many possibilities, so many interpretations. Sigh.

Cross finish line, exhausted

According to an agent at the CIC call centre, Mr. O's permit was mailed out yesterday and will arrive early next week. He doesn't have to have it stapled into his passport, like the immigration officer did with his first one when we entered the country; carrying it with him when travelling is enough.

When all's said and done, so-called concurrent processing means sweet diddly squat in terms of saving time, at least from inside Canada. My guess is that more time is spent on the LMO portion of these applications, to assess whether or not the applicant's job does in fact qualify, and whether or not the potential employer has in fact spent the due time searching for a qualified individual.

Either way, I'm just so relieved that it's over with. Neither of us got much sleep last night. Of course, in their wisdom his employer chose to make it only a three-month contract, so this isn't the last race we'll run...

National Post takes a slash at immigrants

Okay, not exactly accurate. This story by John Ivison actually gives an interesting account of how our little immigrant backlog got so out of control.

My favourite part:

"It is not fair for prospective immigrants to wait for years before being considered, and it is not desirable to wait that long for the immigrants the country needs"

Diane actually lifted that from this blog, I think :)

Jokes aside, the article is however somewhat vague about the type of applications referred to (it doesn't take four years for every application, so I have to assume they're referring to skilled worker class?), and it seems to simplify the motives of those people immigrating, as if family class applicants aren't as interested as every other class in finding jobs once they come here. It seems to me that family ties are beyond a doubt the greatest motivation for choosing Canada above any other random receiving country - a skilled worker might come here to be with his family despite the fact that he or she might otherwise get a better deal elsewhere.

The article also doesn't explain how the existing backlog will be reduced, but only how the government hopes to keep it from growing any further. From what I can tell the money promised will go to future applications, while the 900,000 poor suckers already backed up will still have to be slogged through.

It would also be worthwhile explaining exactly how immigrants put such a drain on the system as the Fraser Institute would have us believe. Oh wait, maybe they're referring to the brick wall most immigrants hit when, after arriving, they try to find a job. Riiiight.

Anyway, here's the article:

Ottawa moves to slash immigrant backlog

Amendment would reduce number of new applications accepted

John Ivison, National Post Published: Thursday, March 13, 2008

OTTAWA -- The federal government is set to reduce the number of new immigration applications it accepts in a dramatic change of policy aimed at cutting the backlog of nearly 900,000 people who have already applied to enter Canada.

Sources say Immigration Minister Diane Finley will table an amendment to the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act as early as Thursday. The new legislation will limit the number of new applications accepted and processed annually.

The act currently requires the government to process every application that enters the system -- a provision that has led to the huge backlog and a wait-time of around four years for an application to be processed.

"It isn't sustainable," said one source, who added that the overall number of immigrants admitted to Canada is more likely to increase than fall in the coming years, even if the number of new applications accepted drops dramatically.

It is believed the amendment will be included as part of the legislation to implement the federal budget, making it a confidence matter.

Maurizio Bevilacqua, the Liberal immigration critic, said the Conservatives don't understand the role immigration plays in Canada's history. "The Conservatives are shutting the door on immigration because they fail to understand its importance to our labour markets and our nation-building. The lack of resources devoted to this issue shows they are not serious about immigration," he said Wednesday.

In this year's budget, the government allocated $22-million to modernizing the immigration system. "It is not fair for prospective immigrants to wait for years before being considered, and it is not desirable to wait that long for the immigrants the country needs," the budget said, adding that the proposed changes will "more effectively manage the future growth in the inventory, such as addressing the number of applications accepted and processed in a year." The changes are designed to establish a "just-in-time" immigration system, where the wait time is reduced to an average of a year.

Ms. Finley has emphasized that the government is seeking to bring the "best and the brightest" to Canada.

"Immigration will play an increasingly important role in our long-term growth and prosperity, and we will continue to look for innovative ways to bring in talent from around the world," Ms. Finley told an audience in Mumbai, India, last November.

But critics contend that the new policy will target "economic class" migrants coming to Canada for work, rather than "family class" immigrants being re-united with Canadian family members, or cases where immigrants are admitted on humanitarian and compassionate grounds.

"The Conservatives are attacking family re-unification but it attracts many skilled workers to come here," Mr. Bevilacqua said.

The government has made no secret of the fact it sees itself in competition with countries such as Australia and the United Kingdom for the most qualified immigrants. This is likely to mean the vast majority of applications accepted in future are from the "economic class" of migrants that currently make up around 60% of newcomers.

Canada accepts about 250,000 immigrants a year, a figure that has increased since the Conservatives took office. The backlog of applications grew from 50,000 when the Liberal party took office in 1993 to around 500,000 in 2000. By the time the Conservatives came to power in early 2006, it was around 800,000 and in the past two years that number has grown to around 875,000.

Some estimates suggest that as many as one-quarter of current applications are more than six years old.

The Liberals made a number of attempts to eat into the backlog. For example, when Liberal MP Dennis Coderre was immigration minister in 2002, he raised the total number of points required for admission to 75 from 70 (points are allocated on the basis of language skills, education and job offers).

However, under pressure from the Liberals' ethnic voting base, the party backed down and reduced the number of points required to 67.

In 2005, with an election pending, then Liberal immigration minister Joe Volpe announced he would increase the number of immigrants by 100,000 a year -- a rise of 40% from existing levels at that time.

The Conservatives have long argued the Liberals allowed political, rather than economic, factors to dominate their immigration and refugee policy.

A report by the Fraser Institute in 2005 suggested that only 23% of immigrants are net fiscal contributors to Canada at a cost to the taxpayer every year of more than $18-billion (although 60% of immigrants are from the "economic class," fewer than half that number pass the points test -- the remainder are spouses and children).

The government says it has already taken a number of measures to make the system more flexible and efficient, including the establishment of Foreign Credentials Referral offices in China and India and moves to make it easier for foreign students and temporary workers to obtain visas.

National Post

LEGIT

Guess who's LMO came today?

More education, less opportunity

Another story in the Globe today about the education level of immigrants to Canada, after StatsCan released 2006 census figures on post-secondary in general. Turns out those foreigners can read and write some:

Close to one-third of immigrants are university graduates, compared with 23 per cent of the general working-age population, according to numbers from the 2006 census released yesterday. Those numbers also show a huge jump in qualifications of the newest arrivals, with more than half of those who came to Canada between 2001 and 2006 holding a university degree.

That's not surprising, considering the amount of investment and savings required to move here in the first place. Think about how much it costs to take a vacation, and then extend that vacation by about six months, supplemented by the occasional, say, babysitting or waitressing gig:

"It is tough, but that is part of the fun," said Mr. Fonseca, 30 [snip] his wife will likely take a job as a babysitter or in a restaurant at first, but hopes to eventually work in her field. "All of a sudden you come here and you are considered a nobody," he said.

I love how the Globe manages to find these plucky pioneering people, though. This guy has a great education, but he's beyond optimistic; he's borderline delusional in his attitude. We all are...

BUT WAIT! Maybe, as the spouse of a foreign student, this woman actually has an open work permit!? Where can we get one of those?

Faster, pussycat

Faster is, by nature, a relative term. We thought that this concurrent processing of Mr. O's new temporary work permit would be "faster" than his first one: he sent in his permit application the same day that his new potential employer sent in the LMO application. According to the agent at the CIC call centre, once the employer gets the LMO confirmation, all Mr. O has to do is call the call centre and they'll inform Vegreville, and the permit will be issued.

Catch being, we're still waiting for the LMO. Last time it took about 2 weeks, and this time it's already been a month. Last time it was the permit that took its sweet time, and this time it could potentially be very fast. Moral of the story: there is no shortcut.

Pieni maailma

For those of you who don't speak the world's tiniest language, that's "small world." Although, maybe you should start learning. The number of Finns or people with Finnish connections that I've come across in Toronto has been astounding. A short list:

-My dear friend C, who has Finnish heritage, and whose grandfather is in the process of getting his Finnish citizenship
-A colleague at work, who comes from Thunder Bay, aka Finnish-Canadian central, and has a funny story about how she pronounces her last name
-A lady at the bank, who actually lived in Sweden, but who can still count to five in Finnish
-Our friend T, who isn't Finnish at all but has been there - that's where we met him - and calls himself a Suomi fan
-My GP, who is Romanian but spent two years in Tampere, where Mr. O grew up, and can bust off a little suomea
-A girl in my yoga class who has a Finnish-Canadian husband who doesn't speak at all but who just got his EU passport
-A couple at the Art Bar who I pegged as Finns immediately
-Countless faceless but instantly recognizable names on hockey jerseys, TV show credits, message boards

I'm forgetting some, but these are the main ones. I think that's one of the great things about Toronto, you're always among people you know.

Even the CBC is getting in on the act with Finnish lessons. So now you have no excuse.

Get an education, eh

This op-ed in today's Globe is overall a well-meaning gesture, but why, oh why, do Canadians always compare themselves to the U.S. instead of to farther afield? Americans aren't exactly the pinnacle of innovation and academe, y'know? I'm beginning to suspect that the real "barriers" are the ideological walls built around North America...what a short-sighted waste.

Canada's relative under-production of graduate degrees, especially compared to the United States, is widely identified as a barrier to increasing our country's international competitiveness and productivity. For example, in 2004, American universities awarded twice as many master's degrees per capita as Canadian universities and about 35 per cent more doctoral degrees per capita than their Canadian counterparts. The OECD reports that Canada trails far behind the leading nations in terms of doctoral graduates.

This might have something to do with the cost of education in this country more than doubling in the time it takes the average grad student to put in six years plus a thesis...just a guess...did I mention I got my master's FOR FREE in Scandinavia?

And of course there is the obligatory nod to immigrants, particularly those elusive, highly educated ones:

Immigration will also play a critical role. Streamlining our immigration process to make Canada a more attractive option for skilled immigrants will be important. However, Canada cannot count on maintaining current levels of immigration of advanced degree-holders to meet future labour market needs. In an increasingly knowledge-based world, competition for highly-educated immigrants is growing in developed nations and emerging economies alike.

Consequently, more needs to be done to attract the best and the brightest international graduate students who remain critical to fuelling the country's pipeline of highly qualified personnel.

I agree wholeheartedly that the immigration process has to be streamlined. But then what? We've got a critical shortage of family doctors in this country while meanwhile there are surgeons driving taxis, not to mention, ahem, web marketing designers stuck in demeaning ghettoized translation jobs. I'm sure they're all writing home about how great Canada is. Why bother attracting more when we aren't making the most of the people we have here, enabling them to do what they came here to do? I'll say it again: what a waste.

Auto-reply

This is interesting mainly for the list of topics to which the minister will not respond:

This will acknowledge receipt of your e-mail to the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration.

If this is a request for case information, the responsibility placed on us by the Privacy Act to protect all personal information precludes us from responding using e-mail unless we are able to verify that you are entitled/authorized to receive the case specific information. In this respect, if you are the applicant or a dependant listed on the application and you provide us with your full name, date of birth, and a file number or Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC) client ID, or you are a person to whom we are authorized to release information (written consent on the citizenship or immigration file) and are able to provide the applicant's full name, DOB and the file number or CIC client ID, you will receive a reply by e-mail within 10 - 30 working days. If you are not the applicant or listed dependant or you are not authorized to receive the information, you will not receive a further reply to your e-mail.

*Please note that we will not respond to e-mails concerning the following:

· Assessment of points/qualifications.
· Calculation of time for citizenship eligibility, visit http://services3.cic.gc.ca/ols/ols.do?lang=en.
· Refusal of an application by immigration or visa officials.
· Complaints about the Call Centre (will be sent to CIC officials for necessary action/information).
· Processing of Permanent Resident Cards (will be sent to the Permanent Resident Card Processing Centre for necessary action/information).
· Processing of Citizenship applications (will be sent to the Case Processing Centre in Sydney).
· Requests to expedite processing of cases (will be sent to the processing office).
· Travel documents/requirements for travel to other countries.
· Complaints about U.S. Immigration.
· Issuance of Canadian passports (please consult www.passportcanada.gc.ca).
· Canadian citizens outside Canada seeking assistance (please consult www.dfait-maeci.gc.ca).
· Opinions about recent announcements/news releases/cases.
· Information about visiting, living, working or studying in Canada (please consult www.cic.gc.ca ).
· Information about services in Canada (www.goingtocanada.gc.ca/index.aspx)
· Requests to confirm the legitimacy of a lawyer, consultant or organization.
· Requests for employment with the federal government (please consult www.jobs-emplois.gc.ca ).

If you are a Parliamentarian (Member of Parliament or Senator) seeking to assist the applicant, we will reply to you by telephone or letter.

Please note that e-mail is not a secure channel of communication. CIC is not liable for the unauthorized disclosure of personal information to or the misuse of that information by a third party where we took reasonable means to verify the identity of the party.

For more information about CIC, please visit one of the following sites.

General information - visit www.cic.gc.ca

For the Call Centre, please visit http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/contacts/call. asp.

For a list of visa offices, please visit http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/information/offices/missions.asp.

Application forms - visit http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/information/applications/index.asp.

Permanent Resident Card - visit http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/information/pr-card/index.asp.

Sponsor your family - visit http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/immigrate/sponsor/index.asp.

Immigrating to Canada - visit http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/immigrate/index.asp.

Refugees - visit http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/refugees/index.asp .

Citizenship - visit http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/citizenship/index.asp.

Announcements/News Releases - visit http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/department/media/index.asp.

For on-line services provided by CIC such as a change of address or to check your application status, visit http://services3.cic.gc.ca/ols/ols.do?lang=en.

Letter to Diane

Dear Ms. Finley,

I am a Canadian citizen, a journalist and editor, who has returned to Canada after almost 6 years abroad in Finland. While I was there I married a Finnish man and last August we moved back to Canada. He came on a temporary work permit (doing translation work for a local agency) and I am employed as an editor at a magazine. We sent in our application for permanent residency under the family class in October, and we hope to have the AIP in May. We are a talented, educated couple who hope to start a family soon.

In the meantime my husband, who is an Internet marketing designer who made $70,000/year in Finland, has been living off a $1,500/month salary and our savings, waiting for his AIP. I am supporting him in every way I can, but the bottom line is he feels frustrated and humiliated everyday, being forced to accept this drop in his quality of life that moving back to my country has entailed. He was denied a drivers' licence in Ontario even though Canada and Finland have a reciprocal agreement on this documentation that Canadian provinces have never honoured. He cannot see where all this investment is taking him, except back to where he was before he left Finland.

He has also been applying for jobs in his field, and last November he was offered a job at an advertising agency, for only slightly less than he was making in Finland. The need to reapply for a temporary work permit has caused a delay of three months (first in the delay of the agency in applying for the LMO, a process they don't seem to be familiar with, and now in the actual application process).

If, as the legitimate spouse of a Canadian citizen, he was granted an open work permit upon arrival in Canada (something he could potentially apply for before entering), then he would be free to make his own way here and his entry into society as a productive member would be expedited. As it stands, being denied this freedom is tantamount to a message from the Canadian government that he is not welcome here, and he would be better off back in Finland, where I am granted work and residence permits, licenses, and other basic rights simply by virtue of being married to a citizen.

He feels that, should his new temporary work permit be denied, he will have little choice but to return to Finland. This puts me in the horrible position of choosing between my marriage and my family and career here in Canada. I never thought that moving to Canada would have the potential to pull my world apart. This is not the way it should be.

Now, I know that Canada is in need of young people exactly like my husband: educated, hard-working, honest. His job description is on the National Occupations List and the list for Ontario, so he is not taking jobs from those who came here before him, but filling a need. I also know that the spouses of temporary workers in Canada are granted an open work permit for the time that they spend here. Why are Canadians' spouses denied the same ability to make their own way?

This simple change would increase the quality of life considerably for new immigrants, and increase Canada's appeal for immigrants who have professional careers already begun elsewhere. It would also work to stop the senseless punishment that most first-generation immigrants suffer here in Canada, for little or no real reward. They put in far, far more than they receive back from this place. Having lived in Scandinavia I can assure you that they would get better deals elsewhere. Canada needs to step up and show these people that they are a valuable part of society, and that begins with the immigration process.

We cannot even consider purchasing a home or starting a family until we have a more stable foundation here. All we ask is to be able to take the jobs we find, work, and live like everyone else. When that is denied to us, the appeal of abandoning this place and going elsewhere becomes stronger and stronger the longer we wait.

Please explain why Canadians' spouses are not granted and cannot be granted open work permits while waiting for permanent residency, and what you are doing to speed the PR application process.

Sincerely,

Fellow ingrate!

Chinese-Australian poet Ouyang Yu has a poem called The Ungrateful Immigrant. Not only do we both have excellent titular taste, but we both like to use the word "fucking" as an adjective in poems. w00t!

Boxing week special: five days off!!

It's been 2 weeks since Mr O.'s temporary work visa app landed in Vegreville - and two weeks since my last post. No real news to report, obviously, but I did notice that the processing time for tempies (one of the benefits of spending so much time with a vocabulary is that you get to give everything cute little names) has been reduced by five days for those who got them in by Dec 30. Again, not relevant to us, exactly, but a step in the right direction all the same.

Keeping tabs

Mr. O's temporary work app arrived in Vegreville, AB - home of the world's largest Ukrainian Easter Egg - yesterday. The current estimated wait time on the CIC site for apps received on or before Dec 11 is 44 days, so really that means we don't know how long ours might take. (If you're in a betting mood, leave a comment.)

Speaking of wait times, I talked to a CIC agent this morning about the wait times on the PR application. Mr. O had emailed me earlier, mildly freaking about the prospect of having to wait another 12 months for his visa - thanks to a note we'd failed to, er, notice on the processing times page, which reads:

There is a two-step process involved in family class applications: the assessment of the sponsorship application in Canada and the assessment of the permanent residence application outside Canada by the visa office. There are separate processing times for each of these two steps.

Processing an out-of-country sponsorship application (i.e. the first step) takes 37 days at CPC Mississauga. In-country, the same app takes five to six months. When that application goes through, Mr. O will get a letter stating his AIP, which means he can apply for an open work permit. But then step 2 begins, and the current wait times on that are anywhere from three to nine months. "I like to tell people 18 months start to finish," says the nice CIC guy.

When I asked him why it took so much longer to process a sponsorship app in Canada than from outside, he told me that the RCMP and CSIS checks (two of the three checks done on each file, Immigration being the third) are both backlogged at the moment because Canadian employers have also started conducting private checks through the RCMP. He also said that the medical is entered into the system about three months after it's done, and that this time of year is also the peak period for applications, all of which create delays.

It makes me think it would be so much easier if CIC agents could do their own checks, rather than relying on the RCMP (in which, sorry, I have little confidence in general) and CSIS. Then again, this could all be part of a big political passing of the buck. We really have no way of knowing.

The good news is that this doesn't change our situation in any practical way. Once he has the AIP he can work (or not work) as he likes, and that date hasn't moved any. The rest of it is, at this point, too far into the future to be worth worrying about at this point.

Countdowns within countdowns

Mr. O mailed his application for a new temporary work visa to Vegreville today, with the understanding that his employer has also sent their app for his LMO to HRSDC. Here's the official link to how this all works. If you clicked that link you'll notice that Mr. O isn't exactly following the rules, but rather taking the advice of a CIC agent. (In stark contrast to the CIC site, the phone reps are wonderfully human - helpful and practical.)

Depending on whether or not he'll have to wait for the LMO (which comes to the employer and then he has to send it to CIC himself) to start processing, it could take from three to six weeks.

Also of note: our PR application was submitted exactly three months ago today. Wheee!

Go ahead, trust your boss

Mr. O and I went out to celebrate, oh, it must have been the Friday before last. The occasion: holding his new contract in his hot little hand. Note, I didn't say "signed" his contract, and I should also mention he had put out an ultimatum to his "agent" a few days previous, that if, after over a month of waiting, he didn't have a contract by the end of the week he wanted to move on to other options. (Stockholm still haunts him, too.)

So he got his contract, and we had our dinner, and little has happened since. Last week the HR contact sent him some half-filled forms (which, he pointed out, had a few too many spelling mistakes, kinda like his driver's license, but I digress). He sent them back completed, with a request to have the HR contact call him so they could speak directly. The person was supposed to be at the original contract meeting, but couldn't make it, so they have never actually met.

According to the forms, the company has at least one other person employed under a foreign work visa, so this process should be at least somewhat familiar to the person in charge. It doesn't seem that way, though. Aside from the painfully slow pace (if they had filed the forms when they offered him the position at the end of November, he would be working there now), Mr. O is starting to get a bit anxious as to whether he can trust the employer to fill out the forms correctly, that is, in such a way that the government will in fact approve the application, which is still not a given.

Before he went in to get his contract, Mr. O called a CIC agent who advised him to send the papers to Vegreville for in-country processing, despite the fact that, as his job is on the National Occupation List, he is eligible for concurrent processing - which is only available via foreign offices, i.e. CHC in London. The woman asked him to append a letter explaining this to his application, info he passed on to the new employer, but which hasn't been done.

All of this - plus the prospect of being left without a job should the app not go through - has Mr. O in a bit of a panic, and rightly so: How do you trust an inexperienced/overworked person you've never met with your future?

5.9 mil and counting

The chart above is from the Economist's special report on immigration. Canada ranks third in both percentage of immigrants and total number in millions, just beating out Britain by 100,000 people. Incidentally, 5.9 million is more than the entire population of Finland.

The CIC also anticipates admitting an average 250,000 new immigrants a year over the next few years, which might drive Canada up in the ratings.

Class action

While Mr. O and I were touring our nation's capital on Saturday, the Globe and Mail was reporting on a class action suit filed by a B.C. man against the Immigration Department, which accuses the government of overcharging on immigration sponsorship fees by 50% (thanks to C&C for the tip!).

Alan Hinton and his lawyer Richard Kurland spent 13 years trying to access information that proved the cost of processing a $75 spousal sponsorship application was in fact only $36.69. So far the suit only covers cases filed between 1994 and 2004, but Kurland has asked for an extension to include all cases up to the end of 2007, which would mean us.

This is my favourite part of the article by far:

"...the Immigration Department, he said, could never ask for such an exemption "because politically it is suicide to tell immigrants that the government is profiting on their visas at a time that they are claiming that processing times are too long because they don't have resources for more visa offices."

Tee-hee.

Starting new

By the end of 2007 I was pretty eager for it to be over. I had this romantic idea in my head of the New Year, in which we would already have a place to live, jobs of some reasonably profitable sort and papers in progress. In other words we would wake up and be ahead of the game. This was only reinforced by one of those "If you have a place to sleep and some money in the bank and can read you are better off than 99% of the world's population" cheery type holiday Powerpoint card thingys, which proved once and for all that all my whining is that of a rich, impatient white girl peeking through toilet-paper rolls for perspective. And the fact remains that we ARE doing absolutely fine, and will be doing even better if Mr. O's mythical job offer ever comes through, and if we find a flat that doesn't leak heat all day and suffocate us all night.

Mr. O's argument is simple: we're not going to be within driving distance of my family whether we're in Toronto or Helsinki, so we might as well go where there's universal daycare and six-weeks' vacation. And he's right. Six months late in getting that message through to me, but right all the same. The frustration and fear that this move was a bad one, a mistake, and an expensive one at that, is still lingering under the surface of everything.

And yet, despite all the practical reasons why we should have stayed in Finland, being home with my family over the holidays, getting to know my five-year-old-when-I-left-16-year-old-now brother, thinking of my sister having kids, and my parents getting older, gets me in a root-laying-down mood. Canada's not so bad, eh? People manage to raise kids here just fine. I can fly home to see the fam for the weekend if I need to. I've got 10 times the job options here, plus writing courses, yoga classes, hairdressers, and doctors, all in English (Woo-hoo!). Toronto is a hard place to love, but once you get it - kinda like learning Finnish, hmm - it's intensely satisfying.

And so while nothing in our situation has actually changed since my last post, the change of the year has cleared away all the logistics and To-Do lists and left me with the bare cold shock (and yes, embarrassing as it may be, it is a shock) of the suddenly permanent distances in my life. The start of 2008 has put me in a state of cold shock that This Is How My Life Is Going To Be from now on. Because when it comes right down to it, Mr. O isn't staying here. Not forever. No way. And if I go, there are many things I will lose. Not to understate the things he will lose by staying here, but this is my blog and I'm being selfish so today it's all about me.

So I have a choice to make which is so much bigger than which neighbourhood to live in, whether I want to stay in journalism or not, whether we should rent or buy. I have to pick a continent, and a lifestyle. Fuck fuck fuck.