(Not So) Sweet November

Finally, November 2006 brings news from CIC. I have been sitting on pins and needles since February waiting on this gift from God, this Canadian immigration process, this elusive ideal.

I go down the hall to the area by the front door of the apartment where the Canada Post employee stops for a few minutes each day and brings to me tidings from the outside world. I receive mostly flyers from Shopper's Drug and Zeller's with their sale notices. I get bank statements and I get many items that have my address but are not for me; perhaps they were prior residents. I thoughtfully balance these articles on top of a little ledge above the row of stainless steel mailboxes so the postman can take them and try to find their rightful owners the following day.

On this special day in November 2006, I receive a white, business size envelope, from Citizenship & Immigration Canada. I am so excited! This must be it, I think to myself. I do not even wait to return to my apartment to read it. I rip open the envelope there in the building foyer and I read it. Below my name and address and a reference line for my file number, the letter says:

Your file has been transferred to: CIC Etobicoke Office
5343 Dundas Street West
Etobicoke ON M9B 6K5

The office may contact you.

That's it. I check the envelope again. It's empty. I am stunned. I read this letter, all one line of it 14 times. I don't know what to think.

I make it back to my apartment and immediately begin to call the CIC Call Center. I do not know what this letter means. I need someone to decipher this code for me. I seem to have misplaced my decoder ring somewhere. I get through to a live paper worshiping CIC agent the following day. He states that a 'determination could not be made' and thus, the file was transferred to the local office. The local office will pick up on the processing of the file. "How much longer do I have to wait?" I cry. The agent advises that this particular local office back log is currently 9 months. I have a thousand questions running around my brain but I just can't seem to utter a coherent sentence at that moment so I just hang up.

9 months rings through my head for days. That is July 2007. What am I supposed to do until then? Where does my life go during this process? I don't understand why this is happening. I pull out my copies of my application and I read through it over and over. I have no criminal record, the FBI verifies that. All the supporting information they asked for is there. I have birth certificates, divorce decrees, copies of bank statements, 8x10 color glossies with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one describing each picture; the list is endless. My brain does nothing but guess at what the problem is.