Not proud to be Canadian at all

It's finally finished, the visa has been issued and no more putting up with Canadian Immigration and their horrible, horrible treatment of people.

Let's start from the beginning, our application for Meng's visa began back in November when we collected all of the proper documents and filled in countless forms. Then send the forms to Mississauga to be processed, then onto Beijing. This part is fine, nothing to complain about. However, when our application was received in Mississauga, they (I'll use 'they' with the tone you use to describe a disgusting group of people who you feel are very unlike yourself) send a letter to say that they have received your documents, that you can check status online, but 'unfortunately, they can not answer any questions regarding your application'. Note the use of can not here, as if it is something that is impossible for them to do because of some constraint, the proper thing to say here would be 'we will not answer any questions' or 'we don't want to answer any questions'. Their use of english during the process will follow this same 'gutless' manner of trying to cover up for their poor attitude towards applicants. Oh, and their online status check, it's great, simply tells you that your application is 'in process; and it gave me this gem of information "application received December 16th, date started processing: January 17th", awesome!


So everything went well in Mississauga and the application was sent to Beijing for the second stage of the application, the first stage took almost twice as long as the time they quoted at the beginning of the process, good job CIC! When the application was sent to Beijing, they sent us a letter (standard letter, not even a form letter which would have filled in our name at the top) addressed 'Dear Applicant' (Jesus Christ!, learn how to make a form letter using Word and Access, it takes 5 minutes) which informed us that applications at this location are now taking 6 to 9 months. This flies in the face of everything else that was said earlier and with their website, which they are always praising as being so up-to-date. Again, top notch service CIC!

Turns out that it didn't take 6 to 9 months but rather the normal 2 months in Beijing that we were originally quoted. We received a letter in late May informing us that we would be required to come to Beijing to have an interview on June 21st at 9am. Excellent, all of the documents are in order, things are going well, just need to finish it off. Of course, 9am means nothing to the them it's just a random number, what they meant to say was 'we start doing things around 9 and we'll get you in sometime in the morning'. Actually, this has more to do with the throngs of people who come to the embassy and start to fill in their forms there (something which I strongly disagree with), not totally your bad here CIC.

So we finally get called in to the interview at 10:30, this is where the good times start to roll. I had imagined that the interview would be in a room where we would sit opposite the desk of the visa officer or maybe at a table. Wrong, we sit in a small booth with a big, thick piece of glass between us and them, way to make people feel comfortable CIC! Without going into too many details of the interview, our application was initially declined after about 10 minutes. Her actual words were 'I'm going to have to refuse your application at this time'. Note the use of 'I'm going to have to', as if some outside force were pushing this decision, that it's not really her doing. Don't be so f'ing gutless, don't tell me 'you're going to have to do something', if you're the one making the decision, have the guts to back it up and say 'I'm refusing your application', don't hide behind this 'I'm going to have to' mask. GUTLESS!

I wasn't going to sit there and accept her refusal, it was bull****. It was based on the fact that we both of us (while being asked at different times) described our relationship as being boyfriend and girlfriend with plans to get married sometime after university. Our understanding of relationships is that you are boyfriend and girlfriend or you are husband and wife. Her understanding was that our relationship was not serious enough (if you look at CIC's new visas, our relationship fits everything decscribed as Conjugal Partner visa), because we said boyfriend and girlfriend and didn't describe it as 'marriage-like' (her exact words). Really, who says marriage-like. The debate continued for quite a while, and explained to her about the Chinese way of looking at marriage and why it's something we can not do right now. Funny how she had almost no concept of Chinese relationships, but her job is to assess relationship visas in an embassy in Beijing. Grade A recruiting CIC! After more debating, she said that she would take a second look at our documents and what she had typed during the interview. Note: why wouldn't they simply record the interview rather than rely on someone having to type and make an important decision at the same time? What the hell are you thinking CIC? These are very important decisions that you're making here.

At this point, everything is a mess. Meng's crying, I'm trying to figure out what the hell we're going to do, trying to calm Meng but not having anything to say that can make this situation easier to deal with.

After 10 minutes out in the waiting room, we were called back in to inform us that they had reversed their decision and that Meng would be issued a visa that day. Finally, reason wins, we would come back that afternoon to pick up the visa. I wish my problems with the embassy ended there. When we returned after lunch, we lined up to get into the embassy and when we got to the front of the line, I was told that I couldn't go in with Meng to get her visa. 'I'm her sponsor, I'm a CANADIAN citizen' but this 20 year old, 140 lb Chinese weakling of a security guard was telling me that I couldn't go into a Canadian embassy. F-you Foreign service, I can't go into my country's embassy when I'm sponsoring someone for a visa. So I got to sit outside on the sidewalk in 35 degree heat for 2 and a half hours. Oh, it didn't take the 2 and a half hours to process the visa, that was done, it took that time to get around to giving it to Meng.

During our waiting time, we met a few people also applying for visas. There was one woman who was applying to join her husband in Canada but had been refused 6 times, yet this man is allowed to stay in Canada. There was another guy, around my age, who wanted his girlfriend to meet his parents before they got married, but had been there all week being refused, yet this man is allowed to stay in Canada.

Oh, almost forgot, if you're rich, you can simply buy your immigration. Correction, you can get your money back after 5 years and 2 months (see paragraph 3 in the link).
Did I mention I hate Canadian immigration?