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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

CIC annual report

The 2007 Annual Report to Parliament on Immigration was presented on Oct 31. My favorite highlight:

The 2008 levels plan upholds Canada’s support for family reunification by planning for between 68,000 and 71,000 admissions of spouses, partners, dependants, parents and grandparents in 2008.

Doctor doctor

Mr. O went for his official government medical examination yesterday, as required by the CIC. When he booked the appointment, the clerk asked him to be sure to bring the right form (which, though it's labelled correctly, somehow doesn't seem to be the right form, but anyway), as well as ID (which nowadays means passport plus one of several official pieces of paper with address, just in case), his work visa, his glasses and/or contact lenses, and three passport photos (the CIC site says four, the clerk says three, you decide). Oh yeah, and 150 bucks.

The place was one of a list of sanctioned offices here in TO, but that didn't mean it wasn't a bit sketchy. First of all, and this is a minor thing, but speaks to the level of infrastructure in general, the place only accepts cash – no credit or debt card reader in sight. In general the overhead was a bit low, especially the X-ray lab, where he wasn't given a protective vest and the machine looked about 30 years out of date. The worst bit, though, was the lab tech who kinda missed his vein, causing his arm to swell up somewhat ominously – albeit temporarily – on the way out.

The doc keeps the form and mails it to the CIC office in Vegreville, AB, where all in-Canada spousal apps are sent. Mr. O was given a receipt, which, as we understand it, will be enough proof to include with our application, which is otherwise pretty much ready to go, except for the fees, which we'll pay just before we send it (you never know). Otherwise, we would have to wait at least three weeks, which is the time it takes for the medical exam to be processed - this from the doctor, who asked my O to call back after that period of time to get his very own case file number to confirm that the medical information had been successfully processed. Why this goes through the doctors offices, instead of directly from the CIC to the applicant, is unclear.