Canadian mother's son wants Canadian citizenship through Consulate in New York

My son applied for Canadian citizenship in May of last year.He applied at the New York consulate in New York city. They told him it will take him from three to six months. His mother is a Canadian living in the US with a green card . The consular agent can't say how long it will take. After numerous phone calls they finaly told him that they need his mother's parent's US citizen papers proving that they became US citizen's after 1977. The question is why is this taking so long and why can't my son contact the Nova Scotia processing center by phone or email. The only way he got any response from the consulate is by constantly badgering them this seems a bit rediculous.


David ingram replies:

The answer is simple. The three to six months time limit was a reasonable projection at the time.

Then, In June last year, The Supreme Court of Canada reinstated some 300,000 applications which had been turned down under a different set of rules.

NO extra staff were added.

In addition another 800,000 people lined up to get a new PR (permanent resident) card LATE. The announcement had been out for three years that the deadline was Jan 1, 2004. However, almost everyone waited to the last minute and it totally wrecked the system because every application seemed to take two times as long as they were expected to.

I make my living filling out forms and almost every one I did came back at least once for something that I considered silly but the CIC considered very important.

An example is their request for details of your son's grandparents' US Naturalization and is explained by another Q & A you should have received before this one.

Therefore, the net result was that every other application was shoved back another year or more.

A For instance, a year ago, we expected new applications through Buffalo to take less than a year. Yesterday, Vancouver's dean of Canadian immigration, Don Cameron (former Canadian Consul in Seattle) notified me that Buffalo's processing time is now 20 to 25 months. Don's email is [email protected] if you wanted to hire him to try and speed up your son's application. He has worked within the system at a very senior level and used to write the government's newsletter on the subject.

Other than that, your son will just have to wait. Badgering the consulate will just slow down everyone's application. I am actually surprised at how fast most of their paperwork is coming back under the adjusted circumstances.

Hope the reason helps you understand what is happening.

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