Wake me up from immigration nightmare

Ok, it’s official: Canada is seriously trying to drive me crazy.

The immigration turned out to be a real nightmare I cannot awake from.

Well… we all know it’s difficult right, but what happened to me was quite unexpected, and scares me more than zombies and vampires wandering in Vancouver streets on Halloween.

My Visa expired in July. Having being hired by my company just a little before its expiration, I was in an extra rush to send the application for the visa extension before it was too late.

The fear of not making it, the stress to deal with papers and forms to be filled in, the money to spend for the Canadian government fees, the money (quite a lot) for my immigration consultant, made my days horrible at that time. My application was received just 3 days before my Visa was over.

But to get a new visa you also need a work permit, that in Canada is called LMO (Labour Market Opinion).

That can be sent even after your visa has expired, but it’s not easy at all to get.

It’s not enough to say “Hey guys, I have a job, here it is my contract”.

No, your job must meet some criteria, in terms of wage, working conditions and so on, enough to convince them you are not literally stealing some job to Canadians, and your boss must convince the office that deals with this stuff that the company really needs you.

A negative LMO means game over, unless you have time and strength to apply again, and now with the new rules it is even more complicated and costly for employers.

Despite of my natural pessimism I got last week a positive LMO, hooray!

Just the time to let me enjoy the week-end, because on Monday I figured out the match was not over at all: having not received my LMO on time, the immigration office in Alberta rejected my Visa, even though I had sent them a paper stating clearly an LMO had been requested by my employer.

Yesterday I went back to my immigration consultant: in other words I will have to apply again, pay extra money, pay my consultant again, including this time in the application the LMO, just not to give them any apparent reason to reject it.

As I cannot leave Canada until the end of the process, and since I don’t know how long it will take, this means no Christmas holidays at home, once again.

And, above all: I don't know if this time my new visa will be approved.

It is more and more my certainty that the system is organized on purpose in such a complicated way, to feed the immigration business.

Yeah, immigration is a business in Canada and a career, so if you have money to spend, get a course for consultant or become a lawyer and you’ll probably pay off the mortgage for your home in few years.

I’m wondering what could be the % on Canadian GDP related to immigration.

As coming to Canada to work is getting very complicated, it may eventually turn against Canadian economy, starting of course from the consideration this country needs immigrants to fill many positions.