WHO WE ARE

We are a group of applicants across numerous countries for Canadian PR whose cases are now being processed in the Canadian High Commission in Singapore (Visa Office).

WHY WE CARE

IRCC states that the majority of PR applications under Express Entry are processed within 6 months. However, we have been waiting for more than 6 months (in some cases more than 10 months) for a decision on our application.

This resulted to unneccesary stress to the applicants where we don't know what's happening to our applications.

In addition, we are professionals working in our respective country locations - with steady jobs and with already established familial ties. Certain Canadian provinces went to us and invited us to apply under their Provincial Nominee programs. We applied, went through the process and got nominated by the Province.

We accepted the nomination with the knowledge that CIC is committing to a faster processing time for Express Entry applicants. This point is crucial for us applicants - especially those already nominated by the Provinces.

As part of the application process, background checks are done by both the Province and CIC. With those background checks, it is inevitable that our respective HR departments, direct supervisors and other superiors will find out about our plans to migrate to Canada. This places some risk on our respective careers as - once managers find out about our plans - they become hesitant to allow us to move forward on our career paths within the company. We will either become stagnant in our roles (he/she is about to migrate/leave the company anyway so why promote him/her?) or - which is highly likely - move on to another company to avoid being branded as one who has one foot out of the door of the company. We feel that this is unfair for us - especially those Provincial Nominees - since it is the Provinces who wanted us to go there in the first place.

 Furthermore, there are a number of cases where Medical results - which are only supposed to be valid for a year - have expired which reportedly resulted to additional expenses for the applicants in order to go through new Medical exams again.

SOLUTION

Improve processing time for SG Visa Office in line with the performance of other Visa Offices in other locations/countries. Other locations are enjoying faster processing time in line with CIC committments compared to SG VO. 

If there are extremely high backlog/demand for SG VO, farm out applications to other locations who can pick up the slack.

This will be a WIN-WIN scenario for both the applicants and Canada. For the applicants as it will mean faster processing time for them and they can avoid getting their applications in limbo within SG VO. For Canada as it will result to immigrants being able to contribute more quickly to the Canadian economy and culture. This is especially true for those immigrants nominated by the Provinces as it is signaling that the skills that the Applicants have are needed in their province.