Some prospective immigrants have landed in Canada in recent weeks, while others are booking one-way tickets with newly stamped passports in hand – just months after CBC News told their stories of the torturous wait under an officer known only to them. code “DM10032.”
The officer had left their requests largely untouched for years, raising questions about the status of employee or even the existence of the individual.
The Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) confirmed to the CBC in January that DM10032 was an active employee, but did not explain why dozens of applicants assigned to this officer have remained in the dark since applying to become permanent residents in 2019. said he did not “comment on personal information”.
It now appears that the department has largely cleared up an outstanding balance of permanent residency (PR) applicants waiting more than two years under the DM10032.
I go to bed most nights very sad. I think I’ve lost myself a little bit.- Ikechukwu Uketui, public relations applicant in Nigeria
“As soon as this story was published, we found out that Officer… started working on these files,” said Oluwaseun Adewolu, who had finalized her stay for the past two months after nearly three years of waiting.
“Two months later όλοι literally everyone on my WhatsApp team got PPR [passport requests]. We have quite a number of people from the same team who are going to land [in Canada] this weekend.”
Adewolu, which is a member of several social media groups created around Canada’s immigration delays and the DM10032, said it knew of more than 30 applicants assigned to this officer who had significant movement in their files recently. two months.
According to written IRCC responses submitted to the House of Commons in March, Officer DM10032 supervised 77 applicants by February 2, 2022-59 of these applicants waited more than a year and only five individuals waited more than two years.
It is not clear whether those with the longest waiting times have been reassigned to other migrant workers or whether Officer DM10032 was able to quickly identify applicants by posting their story in late January.
CLOCKS The public relations applicant says that the “victory” of immigration is happy, but he is still worried about others:
Once seemingly inactive, Immigration Officer DM10032 makes progress after the CBC story was published
Oluwaseun Adewolu, who applied for permanent residence from Nigeria in 2019, says her application has now been processed, but the wait was mentally tiring. 1:32
Adewolu said there is a “happy” atmosphere among applicants now.
“It’s just like giving birth to a new baby, it’s like getting a job promotion,” Adewolu said. “People are joking more, people are just more open … compared to when we were all depressed and sad from 26, 27 months of waiting.”
The Adewolu family left Nigeria and landed in Winnipeg in March. She has enrolled her children in school and done job interviews.
“Three weeks have passed, but to a large extent, I have seen the glamor, I have seen the reality of Canada, I have seen how hospitable the country is.”
Adewolu, top left, and her two children pose happily after arriving in Canada in March. Adewolu’s sister, right, lives in Toronto and came to greet the family. (Submitted by Oluwaseun Adewolu)
Jibi Mathews in India told CBC she last heard from the DM10032 in March 2020. In a briefing on CBC, she said she received her passport application (the last step before becoming a permanent resident) a few weeks ago.
“[I] “I would like to thank the IRCC and Officer DM10032 for finally making the decision on my PR application after two years,” he wrote.
“Waiting kills us,” says the family
But some are still waiting.
Kiranjot Randhawa, who applied for public relations in November 2019, said she is one of the few people still waiting under the DM10032 for more than two years.
“[We] “Try to remain positive about our request that one day we receive this golden email,” he said. “It simply came to our notice then. “But waiting kills us.”
Although she is happy for others who have seen the move, she said the wait has become “more torturous” for her family in recent months.
“They close their tickets, their shopping and everything, and I still wait every day to check my condition,” he said.
The chart above shows the difference in the IRCC outstanding balance between October 7, 2021 and February of this year. There were more than 1.8 million immigration applications in the department’s inventory. (CBC News)
The ones assigned to the DM10032 are just a small snapshot of the mountain of files waiting in the IRCC. Canada has had more than 1.8 million immigration applications outstanding as of Feb. 1, according to the IRCC.
Since January, the CBC has received more than 100 emails from desperate applicants assigned to various officers seeking help to share their stories – some waiting up to five years for a decision.
“It was very depressing, like I slept most nights very upset. I think I lost a little bit of myself,” said Ikechukwu Uketui, an optometrist in Nigeria. He applied in November 2019 and his file was assigned to the officer code “AB14712”.
“It really breaks me mentally, sometimes I just cry; I can’t wait for it to end.”
Ikechukwu Uketui, optometrist in Nigeria, expects from 2019 his permanent residence. He says that waiting for him had a great mental price. (Submitted by Ikechukwu Uketui)
The IRCC hopes $ 85 million will help reduce waiting times
In an email response to CBC News, the IRCC acknowledged that it needed to improve its operations and said it was “taking action” to reduce its stock of applications that grew during the pandemic. He noted that the federal government has proposed $ 85 million in new funding for the department during this fiscal year, which would help hire more staff to work on the backlog and help reduce downtime. “Keep in mind that processing an application can involve more than one official, and applications can be moved from one processing center to another to make processing as efficient as possible,” wrote IRCC spokeswoman Jeffrey McDonald. Ottawa Morning8: 13 Once inactive immigration officer now works on inactive dossiers, applicants say After being left in the immigration vacuum for years, people around the world applying for permanent residency assigned to a Canadian immigration worker – known to each other as a “sleeping”, “useless” or inactive worker – are finally seeing significant movement. their files. 8:13