Strange love

Evil, predatory foreigners who marry Canadians for the holy grail of a residence visa seem to be the immigration fear du jour in the media these days...Not that I don't feel sympathy for these women, but it's not like they didn't know the risks when they signed up for sponsorship.

The larger problem seems to be the weird imbalance in the spousal sponsorship system, in which one spouse becomes financially responsible for the other's potential misfortune. Never mind the opportunities it creates for weasels and cheaters, who have all responsibility lifted off their shoulders by the government (score!). It puts a strange, archaic twist on even those genuine relationships - in which both partners have good intentions - and ultimately has to be supplemented with a private agreement between the partners that they'll work it out - and pay it off - together if things go south. Y'know, a marriage. For the CIC to try to play it otherwise is pretty much asking for trouble.

Even worse: the polygamists are coming! Ahhhhh!

Tax this immigrant

Mr. O and I did our taxes this week and were feeling pretty smart about it, thanks very much. But we paused when we realized that Mr. O pays CPP and EI fees - to the max, in fact - that he is himself ineligible to receive.

Hmm, maybe immigrants aren't such a drain on our precious system after all...ahem.

Success, with a twist

An update from our woman in UAE:

"Just letting you know that I went to the Ministry of Interior today (apparently they changed which department handles these forms), and submitted them. I have the mobile number of the agent, and he said I can come pick it up when it is ready. Will let you know when I pick it up...so far so good!"

This woman managed to do in 3 days what a professional, multinational courier service failed to do in 3 months. Am seeking out online flower and gift basket delivery as we speak...

Happy to be here

The travel bug that had me going for nearly a decade seems to have entered some kind of cocooning phase, because I have absolutely no desire for transatlantic travel these days. Call me crazy, but my top five world destinations at the mo are the T&T Supermarket on Cherry Street, the Toronto Zoo, Prince Edward County, Quebec City and That Place in New Brunswick with the Giant Plaster of Paris Lobster (there's at least one).

The farthest I can imagine flying - and really I could skip flying altogether as I crave a stick shift and four wheels at the moment like a pregnant woman craves pickles - is Cuba, and somebody else would probably have to pay my ticket to drag me that far. Don't believe me? I have to go to France for work this summer and right now I'd rather stay home and watch Law and Order...I don't know what's come over me. Or how about this: Mr. O is going back to Finland for a family party in May - by himself. I'm tempted to claim some great blast of eco-consciousness or blame it on the recession but in all honesty I am far more interested in travelling in Canada right now than anywhere else. I'm excited about roadside fruit stands, campsites with historical plaques, and motels with carpet on the walls.

Perhaps I'm reverting to my North American landlocked ways. And, since it may very well be temporary, I'm enjoying it. Now where is that road atlas...

So far, so good...

Laura emailed on Friday to say she'd received the package and will take care of it early next week (which there means Sat - Thurs). I am very eager to find out if this DIY tactic works...and how long it takes after she delivers it (fingers crossed) for them to get the certificate back to us. Mr. O's work permit expires in June, which means we'll have to get the certificate to the CIC well before then.

It's who you know

We spent two months wondering what would come of our begging letter to CIC to waive the requirement for the Emirati police certificate. It wasn't so unreasonable: Mr. O had lived in the country for exactly one month longer than the six-month exemption, and had a total of two speeding tickets (goes with the territory over there, mom) on his record. We had tried to deliver it according to the instructions provided, and failed. It was worth a try.

Of course, they didn't go for it. I wasn't surprised by that. What surprised me was the near-illiteracy of the response we received. First, the letter was a cut and paste from the CIC site, and the crucial sentence, the sentence that informed us that our request was denied, was actually missing the word "denied." Lucky we both have good grasp of English (something so easily taken for granted, but that should never be when dealing with immigrants), we managed to intuit that much.

What made me really angry though was that the author of the letter (identified only by a code number) didn't seem to have a great grasp of English him- or herself. In "clarifying" the instructions for us once more, they had attached a print out of a page from the CIC site, which instructs the applicant to get the fingerprints, etc. legalized at the Emirati embassy in Ottawa - highlighting this part and actually telling us to send the application package there instead. This is just wrong, wrong, wrong. Anyone who had any comprehension of subordinate clauses (and working for the government you'd think that would be prerequisite number 3 or 4 at least) would see that the documents which were notarized by the Embassy were then to be shipped off to the UAE. Either out of sloppiness or sheer illiteracy, our "helpful" CIC fuckwit was sending us down a path to ruin, or at least to failure to get the documents in before Mr. O has to apply for another open work permit in June.

I wasn't having it. It was obvious that we weren't going to be successful by Canadian methods - it was going to require some special effort. The UAE site had a suggestion: to find a "friend" who lived there who could deliver the papers for us. "Friend" means a) male b) Arabic-speaking and c) possessed of half a brain and a little resilience. Unfortunately, Mr. O's former employer no longer had an office down there, and we had no way of reaching their former fixer. I started looking online for a lawyer in the UAE who could act on our behalf, or at least recommend someone who could, but Mr. O balked at the potential fees (he is, at this point, entirely fed up with the cost of this whole endeavour), and the need for early morning phone calls was too much for us.

I sent out messages to the two or three people I knew with connections there, and put out an APB on Facebook. Within a week I had heard back from a Finnish couple who also worked for the same company, a Danish friend of mine now living back in Copenhagen, and a friend of a friend who was working down there at the time. This last one, we'll call her Laura, has a few friends who might fit the bill, so we wrote her up a big letter last weekend and sent everything down there to her on Monday. If that doesn't work out we'll try the alternatives, because we have options now. After feeling a bit amputated it's very good to have friends come to your aid. We knew from the very start that this part wasn't going to be easy.

We also heard from a few unexpected sources, like a friend we've only known here, who, it turns out, lived in the UAE as a child, and still has family in the country. Even after a year and a half of Finns coming out of the woodwork, it still surprises me when I make connections to these tiny places. A constant reminder that we are not on our own.

Our man in academe

A friend put me on to Jeffrey Reitz today, who's a prof in ethnic, immigration and pluralism studies at the University of Toronto. The rumour is he conducted a study into the CIC processing centre in Vegreville, AB, and found rampant racial discrimination and probably the bones of small animals and god knows what else. I am hunting for it and shall post it here when found.