Thai Tails: Waiting 2 Years to Post

Today's song is: Take the Long Way Home ... Supertramp 69

I have been waiting 2 years to write this post. Two years ago, Thavorn and I decided to have Thavorn apply for a TRV (visitor's visa) to Canada and travel there for a month in the summer of 2016. I checked on the Immigration website and there was a waiting period of about a week to process the application.

My choices were VFS.Global which appears to have won the business of many countries and embassies for outsourcing all there immigration applications, or applying online straight to Canada, which I thought would be much faster.

When I started to fill out the forms it quickly became apparent that our application did not fit the cookie cutter forms that I was filling out. They seem to be designed for a single person going to visit Niagara Fall, or the CN Tower for a couple of weeks. You had to show plane tickets, hotel reservations and sufficient funds in your bank account to support yourself while in Canada. You also had to supply copious evidence that you had a reason to return back to your home country, such as having a job, owning a house, leaving family behind, etc.

I dutifully filled out the forms to the best of my 2 university degrees accrued knowledge, plus working at a high level job for the past 30 years. I paid, the fee (about $500 if I remember correctly) and dutifully submitted everything online and received acknowledgement that everything had been received and the application was complete (i.e. I missed nothing).

Something, you have to realize, is that the application then disappears into the black hole of Immigration Canada, until some government worker passes judgment over it (with no recourse, but to file again). The week passed by and I waited, and waited, and after 120 days I received notification that the application was refused because Thavorn was at risk to stay in Canada. After all, she is a full-time care giver to our son Jaidan and does not own her own house. It did not matter that I had a retirement visa and enjoyed living in Thailand, as does Thavorn and that was the reason we would return. Basically, it evolves down to the Canadian government did not trust this Canadian citizen to abide by immigration law. Guilty before the crime and no appeal to the one person jury.

Basically, that is just wrong! I think a major reason why the government is so stupid about this is that the Canadian immigration system does not track when a visitor leaves, unlike most of the countries in the world. So when you get in, you are in! That needs to be fixed IMHO.

Now, I am no spring chicken and I am running out of time, so I explored the other option to get Thavorn to visit Canada and that is through a spousal sponsorship, which involves all kinds of information gathering and more forms, all to be translated from original Thai documents with the originals submitted as certified copies by the Thai government. All told, it took about 3 months to put this information together with the help of a Toronto immigration lawyer and a total cost of about $9,000, of which, $6,250 was lawyer fees.

The interesting thing I found out was the lawyer told me I did not have a hope in hell of getting a TRV for Thavorn to visit Canada because we were married. So the unwritten rule is your spouse is not permitted to visit Canada to meet the family or perhaps take a 'look see', if that is the type of country she may want to live in down the road. Go figure, but any clown can walk across the Canadian - US border and be granted asylum and put up at the tax payer's expense for years at a time.

The web site showed a waiting period of 1 year, but somehow, using the lawyer got that reduced to 8 months. The really weird last issue we had was when immigration Canada asked for proof of some sort to show that we really planned on staying and living in Canada. I can only assume that some people use the spousal sponsorship which results in a permanent resident card that is good for 5 years and is renewable and is good for coming and going as many times as you wish as long as you accumulate 2 years in Canada out of the 5 years as a replacement for the TRV's that they refuse to award because they are afraid you will stay in Canada! Duh, is it just me but does that sound really just plain stupid.

A month ago we received notice that we were to send Thavorn's passport to Singapore for processing and are lawyer said that was the last step. We had to use the Thai VFS office to submit the passport to Singapore and that resulted in a visit to grumpy land with non smiling Thais, doing us a favor by servicing us. That is teh danger of out sourcing .. you get what you pay for. Their web site stated they only accepted drafts or certified money orders to pay the 1,500 baht fee to send the passport off to Singapore. So off we went to the bank to get one, standing in line, paying for the fee and filling out the forms to submit the passport. When we get to the VFS office on Soi 13 take a number and wait an hour to submit the passport. The grumpy girl states they only take cash and I present a paper copy of the website that states they only take drafts. Grumpy is unconcerned but unwillingly takes the paper copy to show to the office manager with my hope that the web site gets altered so future users of VFS do not waste their time. I don't think it made it past the first garbage receptacle.

We now had to wait for a month for the passport to come back. The Singapore office keeps us informed, about receiving the passport and the date they sent it back to VFS Thailand. It got sent back on June 21st and I had still not been informed by VFS Thailand that they had received it. It must be walking back, or I suspect, sitting on someone's desk waiting for them to notify us by email that we can come pick it up. I check their website and see they have live chat so I use it but apparently the person manning it is sleeping or on a very extended lunch. No response after 3 hours:

So there you have it, a nice Canadian totem pole but not functioning. Next up, I will try an eMail to see how long it will take them to respond, or if they respond.

Credit where credit is due, they responded to my eMail in 90 mins and said Thavorn's passport was ready to be collected (pick up). Hopefully, everything went smoothly and we get back a passport with the permanent resident visa installed! It is late now so we will pick it up first things Tuesday morning :-)

Well, VFS was very efficient with regards to getting Thavorn's passport to Singapore and back. We picked it up during lunch hour in about 20 mins.

This is what we waited 2 years and spent about $9,000 CDN to obtain:

We have until April 18, 2019 to arrive in Canada and activate the permanent residence. If we miss it by a day, we start all over again. Needless to say we don't plan to mess up. We are very happy today!