Finally a Resolution!

When Douglas applied for a Visitor Visa to come home to visit us, I received an email a week later from Guat City saying that it was denied due to the Security Clearances being needed first.  Well, that is the last frontier that we are waiting for until he receives his Permanent Resident Status.  The only problem is that the security clearances are out of our hands as the cogs work very slowly up here in Canada to process said clearances.

The local police station took 5 weeks to process after numerous visits/calls to the station.  The RCMP check in Ottawa took a total of 7 months to process and the last one in Calgary  is on it's 9th week now.  You see a clearance must be obtained from every place that he lived in Canada.  After this last clearance is done only one more remains and that will take approximately 6 months to process.  So, we will not be able to send the completed police clearances down to the Immigration department in Guat City until approximately August 2011.

 I have a templated email that I have been mailing to the Minister of Immigration, Jason Kenney, almost every day for the past two years.  In that email I explain the situation, the ages of our children and politely ask for a 10 minute meeting with him in the future to discuss our options.  I have NEVER heard even a templated response from his office in either Calgary or Ottawa.

When I received the email of decline, I wrote back a VERY long email once again explaining our situation. I was SHOCKED that I received an email of response a day later explaining that in light of the situation, they were looking at "options for our family and would be in touch on Monday".  That email arrived on the Thursday.  On the Monday (& it was in the morning!), I received the JOYFUL email that explained that the Immigration Manager had issued a SPECIAL PERMIT for my husband to return home while they continued to process his paperwork!! I cannot begin to express how excited I was.  I couldn't pick up the phone fast enough to tell him the great news.

A few days later and he was exciteadly enroute to pick up his permit when he had his little "fender bender" (see earlier post).  He still managed to pick up the wonderful permit!

He is now in the midst of packing up his life down there - he has quite a bit to sell.  Our house is currently on the market for sale as we finished the renovations (FINALLY!!!) in December.

There was absolutely no sense in him ever being processed for his PR status externally, and issuing this permit while they have not completed his status only proves my point - but that is the way our hopeless Canadian Immigration department is run.

We all sleep better at night knowing that he will soon be back up here with us again in time for Avalon's next birthday and Trinity's Grade 8 graduation!  It will be interesting to see how he assimilates back into the Canadian way of life and also interesting to see how Tequila (his little chihuahua) & Thumbelina (our little chug) get along together - I don't have a good feeling about that.