To whom it may concern, I appreciate your consideration of a story about my family's predicament which is no closer to resolution than when the issue first arose in 2009. I am a Canadian citizen and my biological son is a visitor to Canada despite living with me all his life and residing with me and his mother and Canadian brother in Canada. He has been denied Canadian citizenship and I apply for OHIP for him on a yearly basis. He goes to his local kindergarten as a visitor of Canada despite the fact I pay taxes for his education. Now we are, like the other family you wrote about, stuck in the Inland sponsorship mess. We recently had insult added to injury by hearing the news that immigrants with skills CIC considers 'superior' will be fast tracked for permanent residency and this is on top of the insult that refugees and adopted children abroad have more rights than the child of a Canadian citizen. I lived in Canada from the time I was 6 months old (I was born in Scotland while my father was studying in Glasgow) until I was 32 years old. I then went and taught overseas for 12 years with my last post in Lima, Peru. I met my wife there and taught at a prestigious British school for 9 years. We had two children named Stephano and Mateo. Stephano was born in 2006 and I thereafter went to the Canadian embassy to apply for his Canadian citizenship card which was approved and we received at the embassy in Lima after a short wait time. Our second son, Mateo, arrived in 2009 and I again went to the embassy to apply for his citizenship as we had planned a trip to Canada shortly after his first birthday. We were shocked to find out his citizenship was denied and that the law had changed in April of 2009 to disallow children born to second generation Canadians citizenship. It was embarrassing and demoralizing to have to apply for a visitors visas for my biological son a week before we were to travel. I was told I should have read the CIC "landing page" to know about this change to the law. Since that time I have done everything possible to have our voice heard and to try to get across why this change to the law, in many respects, has made my citizenship null and void and (from my point of view) taken away the most important right I enjoyed as a citizen which was to have the rights and privilege to pass on citizenship to my children. In no way am I a 'Canadian of convenience' as I had always maintained strong ties to family and continued to pay my student loans. It was always my intention to return to Canada when possible and financially viable. Our story was in the international news on two separate occasions. My parents wrote their M.P. as Canadians abroad do not have representation in Canada. He wrote a letter on our behalf to the Minister of Immigration at the time, Jason Kenney, but there was not even a reply. We have written letters to Members of Parliament, Senators, the Prime Ministers office but all to no avail. The PMO office told us they had forward the letter we wrote to the Minister of Immigration which they assured us they would consider but it was not even acknowledged. I was sent an email by CIC that my request for permanent residency for my son and wife was denied because I could not prove I would imminently be returning to Canada. This situation began to effect my health, my career and our family life. It was impossible for me to let this go as Peru is a country with a much higher crime rate than Canada and if anything ever happened to me my young son would most likely never had the opportunity to grow up in Canada. I agonized if I should just return to Canada and leave behind a high paying job and therefore at least end this nightmare. The dilemma was I could not return to Canada and maintain a decent standard of living because teaching prospects currently are slim to none in Canada with an oversupply of teachers. I decided my sons citizenship rights are more important than a job and that if the government could take away my sons rights while overseas what would stop them from also taking away my citizenship? We could have stayed in Peru and applied OUT - land for residency status but that would have had a serious effect on our family finances with no guarantee of approval for me as a sponsor as I was no longer working. It was not an option for me as a father to leave my wife and children in Peru and for me to return to Canada because I had no trust from my experience with CIC that the permanent residency process would happen in a reasonable time frame and if it would even be approved despite my oldest son and I being Canadian. We landed in Canada February 24th 2014. Thankfully we made it through immigration and safely to Canada. It is likely to take over two years before Mateo gets permanent residency and then another two year wait for citizenship which I have been told will be granted automatically. My wife is unable to work as she waits for permanent residency and is fearful to go to the doctor as she is on an emergency medical policy which I pay for. All the papers we submitted will need to be resubmitted because medical checks and criminal record checks will have expired after one year. This will further add to the wait time and cost of resubmitting these tests and documents. I am currently working part time for A school board as an occasional teacher. We are getting deeper and deeper in debt as her permanent residency continues to be pushed off to the distant future. I have monitored wait times very closely which have gone from 14 months to 16 months the last two weeks which leaves me gravely concerned for this process. I understand that the federal government is going to allow work permits for spouses as a pilot program. However this is not enough as this is a human rights violation and goes against what is written on my citizenship certificate that clearly states that I am a Canadian with all rights under the law. The problem is that this government is able to arbitrarily change the law without consulting regular citizens. Therefore rights have no meaning because they can be changed with the stroke of a pen. That leaves me with serious reservation if Members of Parliament even read bills before they become law. Are they told how to vote by their party? Our own M.P. told us he is powerless in immigration matters and his case worker simply told us immigration is a mess. When regular Canadians no longer have a voice we should all be gravely concerned. It is more than evident that the government has chosen to ignore my son's situation and turned their back on a Canadian citizen. My mother recently phoned me after watching Prime Minister Harper's speech to the United Nations sharing his plans for maternal health abroad. She was very upset and said she couldn't understand how they can spend money on issues abroad when they do not even look after the needs of children in Canada by at least employing sufficient staff to get through this backlog of applications. We have been told that we just have to wait in line.... As a last ditch effort we even tried to write the Ontario Minister of Immigration who at least wrote us back and has offered some suggestions to apply for citizenship for my son on compassionate grounds. I will not do so though because this issue needs to be exposed and corrected not just for my family but for those that will suffer through this in the future. Regards, Paul Compton (on behalf of Mateo Compton, my son and Paola Moscoso Castillo, my wife) http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2012/09/23/canadian_family_divided_by_citizenship_changes.html?app=noRedirect