28 months wait for partner support in Quebec: announcement from Minister Mark Miller

A group of Quebecers who have been waiting more than a year for their family reunification files to be processed say federal Immigration Minister Mark Miller says the delays faced by Quebec applicants compared to elsewhere in the country are “unreasonable.”

• Read more: Waiting years for her husband to settle down: “I feel betrayed by my Quebec, whom I love so much.”

According to data from Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC), the sponsorship deadline for a spouse living outside the country is 28 months for Quebec applicants and 12 months for applicants elsewhere in Canada.

“The significant differences in processing times for the requests submitted by the Quebec respondents are, in our humble opinion, unjustified,” we read in the notice, a copy of which was obtained by TVA Nouvelles.

Therefore, they ask the minister to establish a “clear and orderly” processing schedule for applications that have already received the Québécois Qualifier (CSQ) issued by the provincial government and return them to visitors.

The eight applicants, who were assisted in their process by the Quebec Immigration Lawyers Association, are demanding that their files be processed within 30 days of receiving the formal notification by the minister on Friday.

If no concrete action is taken in this direction, the plaintiffs will take their case to the Federal Court of Canada with the intention of obtaining an injunction, forcing the ministry to take action.

In a 12-page document sent to the minister, we note that “unreasonable delays in processing have serious consequences for sponsorship applications in the family reunification category originating from Quebec.” Some have been separated from their children or spouse for years.

“For others, being separated from their partner prevents them from starting a family, while a woman cannot always have children,” we add. For a large number of them, this state of uncertainty and instability causes mental health problems, especially anxiety, but also financial, career and family problems.

The immigration minister’s office said in an email that family reunification is an “absolute priority.”

“We have begun increasing the processing of family reunification applications in Quebec to slow the case growth and processing times associated with family reunification in this province,” we claim.

“Given the large number of places in Quebec, there has been a backlog in recent years that will take some time to reduce, but we are committed to reuniting families in Quebec,” we say.

We have been waiting for twenty months

Laurianne Lachapelle, coordinator and member of the group of applicants, waited more than twenty months for her Guatemalan husband to arrive in the country.

Since receiving his CSQ in January 2023, he has not heard back from the application he submitted in August 2022.

“Nothing is moving forward,” she said.

Even her husband’s attempts to visit her in Quebec are denied temporary visa applications.

“It actually prevents a couple from seeing each other,” she adds. I don’t know why IRCC is targeting families in Quebec. I find this unacceptable.

In an interview with TVA Nouvelles in September, Mrs. I considered leaving the province due to the delay in processing his file.

Despite 17,246 CSQs issued by Quebec in 2023 for sponsorship files, only 10,295 applications were processed by the federal Ministry of Immigration during the same period.