The stagnant permanent residence application has left London, Ontario, and the engineer’s life is “on hold”

The stagnant permanent residence application has left London, Ontario, and the engineer’s life is “on hold”

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With the economy hit by the COVID-19 pandemic, 25-year-old Aravind Shaju had to reluctantly quit his job as an engineer in a laboratory in London, Ontario.

There is no problem with Shaju’s work or the operation of Shamir Canada, which produces spectacle lenses.

Shaju was born in India and came to Canada in 2017 and was unable to work legally because his application for permanent residency status has not progressed.

Shaju submitted an application based on the Canadian experience course in April 2020 and was told that it usually takes 6 to 8 months to respond. He completed his studies at Fanshawe College.

Now, 14 months later, Shaju is still waiting for his permanent residence application to be processed. He said that even the security check component of his application seems to be stagnant.

“Because of this huge delay, my entire life is in a state of uncertainty,” he told CBC News. “This caused a lot of financial pressure and affected my mental health.”

Sha Zhu has contacted other permanent residency applicants and stated that many people who submitted their applications in the first and second quarters of 2020 experienced longer delays than usual in processing their applications.

People in the same situation are using the #Finalize2020Q1Q2InlandPR Twitter hashtag as a forum to call on the government to finalize permanent residency applications for Canadian residents who submitted applications in early 2020.

And online petition There are more than 3,100 signatures.

Shaju said that being unable to work has brought huge difficulties to people who have severed ties with their families. In addition, lack of residency means that he cannot get medical care.

“They are actually playing around with people’s lives here,” he said.

CBC News contacted the office of Immigration Minister Marco Mendicino for comments.

The office issued a statement stating that the pandemic caused delays in processing time due to office closures and migration of migrant workers to work from home. The statement also stated that the Ministry is taking steps to modernize the immigration system by speeding up the application process.

The lawyer says the delay is alleviating

Ed Corrigan, a lawyer specializing in citizenship, immigration and refugee issues in London, believes that the delay is understandable because the pandemic effectively shut down the processing of immigration files.

He said: “The COVID really made things difficult.” “From March to September, almost nothing happened. The system took a long time to adjust.”

Corrigan said immigration officials work from home and most immigration hearings are conducted through Zoom. He believes that as more and more people get vaccinated and the government gets used to a new way of working, the backlog will ease.

“Things have started to get better. They didn’t give people a reliable timetable estimate,” he said. “I have clients from abroad who are stuck there due to travel restrictions. This makes people feel frustrated, but unfortunately, it is very typical.”

Shaju said that he knew that the pandemic would postpone the timetable, but based on information he heard from other applicants in early 2020, their files appeared to be in a certain unique retention mode. He has talked to people whose applications are in progress, even if they are submitted after him.

“We were ignored,” he said. “Our application was not processed at all.”



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