I will be speaking because of the time constraints.
I am a practising lawyer here and I will keep my comments short and to the legal side of the immigration system. I'm happy I'm here today because I have always wanted to share this opinion of mine with respect to the frustration I have when there are immigration applications being processed from overseas.
Because of this frustration I have, I have reduced my intake of immigration applications on behalf of clients. Applications take years. I can specifically mention that I know of a couple of family-class sponsorship applications that have taken over eight years to be processed, even though an appeal was allowed and an error in the application was rejected again. We had to correspond and correspond, and it took months for the embassy--that's in Syria, because most of my applications are being processed through Syria--to eventually respond when I sent them a letter, for example, saying, if you do not respond I'm going to Federal Court, and the Federal Court will be asking for cause and damages. That's basically when they responded.
It's very frustrating for us as lawyers. The same information keeps being asked by the embassy staff over and over--same documents, same photocopies. There is delay by them in answering questions or queries by us lawyers from here. They send correspondence to us with files without names--just file numbers--and we have to write back to them asking them for the name of the client. That's another two months for them to answer back. They send letters dated one date and the envelope dated a month and a half later, and they give the client a deadline of one month from the date of that letter. So again we have to write to them, send them copies of the envelope, send them copies of the letter, and ask for an extension of time. That's a further delay.
They do not review files, it seems. Each time we ask for an update they ask for the same thing, the same standard letter they have. If clients go and ask them at the embassy, at the visa section, what is happening with their application, first of all, the clients say they are not treated as human beings there. They are treated differently from people with other nationalities, and at the same time they tell them, “Go and ask your lawyer in Canada. Your lawyer did not send us what we had asked your lawyer to send.” They come to us. We show them proof that we had sent to the embassy what they needed us to send to them.
So really all this is very frustrating. To clean up the situation, that would help immensely with the backlog they have at the embassy, especially with the situation of refugees, because a lot of them do have family here who are willing to sponsor them. They do have family here who are willing to support them, and if the mind was put actually to the application and to the paperwork, we would not have the backlog we have now here in the system.
Thank you.