Canadians born abroad are facing severe setbacks as a massive backlog at Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) creates processing delays of up to 33 months for citizenship certificates. When Pascal Sud and Meisha Smith anticipated the birth of their first child in January, the expected wait time for the certificate their daughter Sofianne needed to fly to Montreal was four to six weeks. More than eight months later, Sud is back working in Montreal while Smith and Sofianne remain in Jamaica. Sud expressed deep frustration over missing key milestones in his daughter’s life, noting that a visitor visa application for Sofianne was rejected because IRCC stated she must travel on a Canadian passport since she is legally Canadian. The department is currently grappling with 136,000 pending applications, a surge intensified by a federal law passed late last year allowing anyone with a Canadian ancestor to apply. Immigration lawyer Christine Beltempo noted that experts anticipated a major surge following the introduction of Bill C-3, but the exponential rise in processing times has alarmed legal professionals. Taous Ait, a spokesperson for Immigration Minister Lena Metlege Diab, stated that the agency is onboarding extra staff and improving intake systems to handle the heavy demand. Conservative immigration critic Michelle Rempel Garner criticized the government for ignoring warnings about the legislation, while NDP immigration critic Jenny Kwan described the delays as completely unreasonable. Robert Woodrich, a Canadian living in Switzerland, has waited nearly 600 days for a citizenship certificate for his three-year-old daughter Michelle so she can visit family in Canada. Although immigration lawyer Colin Singer suggested Michelle could travel on her Swiss passport since the certificate has not yet been issued, families remain trapped by conflicting travel rules and lengthy administrative queues. Conservative MP Kathy Borrelli emphasized that the government should have prepared for the influx of requests to prevent families from enduring such prolonged separation.
Source: cbc.ca
