Around 150 foreign service workers walked off their jobs in Ottawa two weeks ago. That means longer wait times for permanent residency applications for temporary foreign workers.

The Professional Association of Foreign Service Officers, the union which represents the workers, said the strike will affect visa and permanent residency applications.

The processes will be “significantly delayed or completely halted,” said Christiane Roy, a spokesperson for PAFSO. Only refugees’ applications would be not affected, but tourists, temporary foreign workers and international students will feel the lag.

The union is seeking “equal pay for equal work,” as government workers including economists, commerce officers, policy analysts, and lawyers who do comparable work make up to $14,000 more than foreign service workers, she said in an email.

Around 1,350 embassy workers have been staggering services since April in 15 of the busiest visa offices in Canada and abroad, including Manila, Delhi and Mexico City. It’s been a bitter battle between the PAFSO and the government – with both sides accusing the other of bargaining in bad faith.

Citizenship and Immigration Canada has responded by hiring additional staff on a temporary basis to help process visas, said Glenn Hart, a spokesperson for the department.

But Roy said that isn’t true. “They have been repeating this for weeks. Yet our members have yet to see any of these ‘additional staff,’” said Roy.

She also criticized the government for replacing the workers. “‘Additional staff hired on a temporary basis’ will never replace officers which received years of training on immigration law and interview skills,” Roy said.

 

The local impact

The strike couldn’t come at a worse time for Cherelyn Rama, a temporary foreign worker who is a dental assistant in Whitehorse.

“Of course I’m nervous,” the former nurse from Bacolod, Philippines, said. “I was expecting to get my permanent residency this year – if not, I’ll have to renew my temporary work permit again.”

That process can take its toll on temporary foreign workers in the Yukon. Each renewal costs $300 and a trip to Alaska, as migrant workers must process the permit outside Canada.

Rama arrived in Whitehorse in 2010 and filed for permanent residency in 2011. She initially sent her files to the visa office in Buffalo, N.Y., which shut down in May 2012.

Before it closed, CIC informed her to send her medical exam results and police clearance, which are necessary to be approved as a permanent resident.

Rama admits she only saw the email four months later, but that she wishes CIC would call for such an important matter. Once she replied to the email, CIC did pay her a call.

She’s now working on obtaining the police clearance from Manila, which often takes several months to process.

A broken system?

Official Opposition NDP argue that since the Conservative Party took office, there have been several cases of “immigration mismanagement,” according to a press release in Dec. 2012.

“In their haste to reform Canada’s immigration system, the Conservatives actually forgot about the files of nearly 10,000 qualified worker applicants for permanent residence,” said New Democrats.

Nearly two years after paying the required fees and sending their permanent residence applications to Buffalo, thousands still haven’t received a response from Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC),” the release stated.

The immigration department asserts that the files are being taken care of. “Most of the files that were transferred from Buffalo to the Ottawa processing office will be completed by summer 2013,” said the CIC’s press secretary, Alexis Pavlich, in an email.

 

Fumbling through lack of info

On top of the long wait times, migrant workers in the Yukon are often left in the dark about the status of their applications.

Rama said she did not know who to turn to when she had questions on her application, considering there has been no CIC official in the territory since October.

The territory aimed to debunk the confusion by holding an information session last Friday. Territorial and federal immigration officials, including a representative from the workers’ compensation board and

employment standards informed migrant workers of their rights and responsibilities at the session.

It’s the second time the session took place, the first being in April, said Eilidh Fraser, a spokesperson for the Yukon Education Department, which handles immigration in the territory.

A Vancouver-based CIC official, Darcy Bromley, spoke recent session. It would have been helpful to migrant workers such as Rama.

The problem is, the session is intended for new temporary foreign workers, who came in through the Yukon Nominee Program three months prior to the session, Fraser said.

Also, individuals cannot ask questions about their specific cases – it’s simply meant to be a general overview of the program. The session is mandatory, so the workers can “familiarize themselves to the obligations to the program and the resources (available to them),” she said.

The government justifies the cutting of a CIC official in the Yukon in October as a way to eventually improve service.

“The decision to close the visa office in Buffalo was tied to this modernization strategy. By centralizing more processing in Canada, particularly for files that are more straight-forward and with lower risk, CIC can provide better service and create jobs in Canada.”

Coincidentally, October was also when the contentious budget bill C-45 made sweeping cuts to employment insurance, pension, and environmental protection.

Rama questions the whole immigration system. “Why do some applications take more than two years and some take less than that?”

She hopes to receive permanent status soon, in the hopes of one day making it back to nursing.

She volunteered as a nurse in the Bacolod Our Lady of Mercy Specialty Hospital in an effort to get a job.

“Your hard work doesn’t pay off as a nurse in the Philippines,” she said. So she decided to try her luck in Canada.

“Right now it’s hard because I’m also paying for the education of my two brothers,” she said in Tagalog.

Meanwhile, Ottawa announced employers would have to pay a $275 application fee if they are interested in recruiting a worker from abroad, which the government predicts would reduce applications by 30 per cent.

However, because the territory recently annexed its own version of the Temporary Foreign Worker Program, Yukon employers would not have to pay for the fee for now, Fraser said.

Contact Krystle Alarcon at krystlea@yukon-news.com