Here we are in October...

While I was in Ghana and we visited the Canadian visa office there, we were told that we should expect to hear from them by September and if we hadn't, then we should start making enquiries. After I recovered from my astonishment at actually being told BY Immigration Canada to MAKE ENQUIRIES, I was more than happy to follow those directions. So, September 30, I dropped by the local MP's office to have them make an enquiry for me (since Accra stopped responding to my personal enquiries several months ago). Not surprisingly, since this office has never been overjoyed about helping me out before, they were rather reluctant to help out. The woman even said, "well, maybe we should wait a few days, until the end of the month." Um, excuse me, but did I look at my calendar wrong? Does September not have only thirty days? And if these people have had three and a half months to get me a response to some submitted documents and haven't done it by now, why on earth would waiting another few days make a difference?

Yes, I got a little bit in her face.

I was then rather hautily dismissed from her presence, and while she agreed to do the enquiry, she sure didn't agree to do it cheerfully.

I've read through the CIC operational manuals available on their website, and, as far as I can figure, according to their own guidelines, we're due, even slightly overdue, for a final decision on this application. I would have been happy to point that out at the MP's office and ask them to challenge the visa office on why they're not adhering to their own rules, but with the prompt dismissal I received, I figured that the staff working for my MP (and from his well-known reputation, the MP as well) really couldn't care less.

So I picked up the phone and called the closest MP of the opposing party. And had a wonderful conversation with the first government-related person in this entire process who actually wants to help me: one of the staff working for Sukh Dhaliwal's local office in Surrey, BC. I will tout this guy's name for all it's worth just for the fact that they were polite to me on the phone, interested in my situation, had a desire to help, and made an enquiry with CIC's main database without me even having to ask. And if these people come through on their words ("I will personally pursue this until it's resolved."), I'm thinking I just might send them chocolate every week, possibly for the rest of my life.

Not much of an update, but right now, we're taking everything we can get in order to stay positive. I'm just looking forward to next week, when we'll hear the response to the enquiries and hopefully find out exactly what is going on with our file.