We encourage the petitioners to send out this template letter to Government of Canada as per the instruction provided below. As of today's date, inland sponsorship files are still suffering from major delay for no formal reason. ----------------------------------- Instructions to send To: stephen.harper@parl.gc.ca; minister@cic.gc.ca; chris.day@cic.gc.ca; chris.alexander@parl.gc.ca; david.manicom@cic.gc.ca; pm@pm.gc.ca; david.tilson@parl.gc.ca Lysane.Blanchette-Lamothe@parl.gc.ca; john.mccallum@parl.gc.ca; Rathika.Sitsabaiesan@parl.gc.ca; CIMM@parl.gc.ca; justin.trudeau@parl.gc.ca; [your local MP email] CC: costas.menegakis@parl.gc.ca; jason.kenney@parl.gc.ca; Jinny.Sims@parl.gc.ca; thomas.mulcair@parl.gc.ca; Subject line: ATTN: PM Harper Re: Inland Sponsorship Delay from [your name] THE EMAIL TEMPLATE November 7, 2014 Dear Prime Minister Stephen Harper: This message contains very important information, so please spend some time to read. We are Canadian families who have been going through extremely frustrating process to legalize the immigration status of the foreign spouses under Inland spousal sponsorship. We are same old people, with same old story, and same old frustration towards the delay imposed to us by CIC. We have raised our concerns in countless emails, phone calls, group letters, to almost every single MP in Canada, through media, petition pages, social media channels, since beginning of this year. Unfortunately everything has been done to no avail so far, though we are sure Minister Chris Alexander and the CIC staff are very aware of our situation. We have collected almost 1,500 electronic signatures from people living in Canada coast to coast to coast who experience extreme hardships caused by the unreasonable delay for this particular stream. We have written to Minister Chris Alexander, MP Lysane Blanchette-Lamothe of NDP, MP John McCallum of Liberals, Mr. Chris Day - Chief of Staff to Canada's Citizenship and Immigration Minister, to our local MPs. We have addressed and got positive responses from these people, affirming us that the issue is “being look at very hard” and changes will happen. On November 3 2014, Liberal MP John McCallum, wrote to us: “Families and spouses should never be separated from one another due to arbitrary reasons. I am opposed to the delays in the processing of spousal sponsorship applications. This is highly damaging to many Canadian families. I recognize the extreme importance of keeping spouses and families together, and agree that loved ones should not be separated due to time delays by Citizenship & Immigration Canada in the processing of spousal sponsorship applications. Thank you again for your support and for taking the time to share your opinions with my office. Continuing to address these issues and finding meaningful solutions is a priority for me and the Liberal Party of Canada.” On Oct 24 2014, via his Facebook account, Minister Chris Alexander responded to the matter brought up by our group that reads: “We are looking hard at this issue, Eric. Thanks for your comments.” On October 20, 2014, Mr. Chris Day, following hundreds of inquiries from Inland sponsors addressed to Minister Chris Alexander on his twitter Q&A session, also responded: “@InlandSponsor: As @MinChrisA promised, more will be done for inland and overseas spouses when relationships are legit. Stay tuned!” On Oct 8 2014, Mr. Klaudios Mustakas – former CIC Manager wrote in his article: “The CIC should have better things to worry about than the possibility that a spouse may fail stage one approval. The 13-month waiting period causes countless problems for a family in Canada. 1) The proposed immigrant may be the main bread winner of the family and must wait over a year before he or she is eligible to apply for a work authorization. 2) Families are forced to live on their savings and in some cases must depend on extended family or even social assistance for support. 3) If they go on social assistance, then technically the sponsor is no longer eligible to sponsor their spouse. 4) The foreign spouse is not eligible for provincial health insurance until stage one approval. So what if the spouse is now pregnant or suffers from an illness?” On October 7, 2014, MP Lysane Blanchette-Lamothe of NDP made a formal inquiry to Minister Chris Alexander that reads: “I am writing to you today to bring to your attention the vast amount of dissatisfaction regarding the processing time for inland sponsorship applications. As of September 26th, 2014, CIC’s website indicates a 13 months delay to process an initial assessment (stage 1). However, as I am sure you know from the e-mail campaign targeting both our offices, several Canadians affirm already having waited 14 months without having a stage one approval. These delays are considerable considering that, besides from creating anxiety for families, it precludes the applicant from obtaining a work permit in Canada, leaving many of these families in financial dire straits. When CIC’s 2013 Report to Parliament was tabled in October 2014, you assured Canadians that: “we will continue to drive down backlogs, reduce wait times and improve service. We will continue to reunite families […]” Nevertheless, both budgetary and human resources continue to get cut according to your department’s 2014–2015 Report on Plans and Priorities. Unfortunately, as a result, neither backlogs nor wait times seem to have been reduced. I would really appreciate some information about why and when we can expect to see some improvement to the Inland Sponsorship Program?” Also just last month, Mr. Thomas Mulcair, the leader of NDP has started a petition for Canadians to raise this very concern through official parliamentary channels at http://petition.ndp.ca/inland-sponsorship We all see how the public and concerned politicians alike, have responded to this delay with great disappointment. Regardless of all the promises, as of today November 7, 2014, the processing time is still sitting at 14 months, and potentially going up every passing week. That is just for the first stage approvals – the sponsor eligibility assessment, also called Approval in Principle, which allows sponsored spouses in the country the right to work (and pay tax), to have access to health care system (just like any other legal foreigners living in this country), to have driver license and be recognized in the jurisdiction they live. Are we asking for too much? We understand that there are about 10,000 files in this stream, which translates to 10,000 Canadian families that are severely impacted financially and emotionally by this delay. While waiting for the permanent residency to be approved, the sponsored spouses simply want the right to work so we can have multiple sources of income to nurture our typical families like any other Canadian and foreign families in this country. Pregnant women want to deliver their babies in safe conditions in Canadian hospitals because the babies, with one Canadian parent and born on Canadian soil, are deemed Canadians at birth; they are the future citizens of this country by default. Why can these newborn children not have the same right and privileges of a safe birth guaranteed by Canadian healthcare system? Why the Canadian parents that pay their dues to the healthcare system now have to pay for the delivery of their Canadian children and see the tax dollars used to fund for foreign workers and students' healthcare? Who would be in the right mind to explain this equation for us? Could anyone from the federal authority explain to us the rationale behind the action of punishing, trapping, paralyzing in-Canada foreign spouses of the Canadians by CIC taking no action for almost a year now, as we are not aware of any similarity from any other peer country or any former Canadian government? We don’t want any new promises – we have had more than enough from the Minister office. We want changes: real changes, immediately changes, reasonable changes. As elected government officials, you should stand on the side of Canadians and address this overdue concern affecting the well-beings of Canadian families, even though we are just a small group of about 10,000 families. We are Canadians and we are served by all levels of Canadian governments. We paid fees for this immigration service and CIC operations must be bound by the contract terms for reasonable processing time and procedure. The federal election is around the corner, less than a year from now, there is no better time than now for us to test the political parties on how you handle issues that directly impacts minority groups. However, we hope that you will stand up for us, not just for your political interests, but all you need is a very typical mindset and heart for you to realize this issue is fundamentally wrong for Canada, and should not be existing in our system any extra day. We are your fellow Canadians, and we are suffering. Thank you,