From missed work to mounting debt, permanent residents say being stranded abroad without their Canadian identification has left lasting scars.
CBC News recently shared Helen Bobat’s story. She spent weeks trying to gain approval to fly into Canada without her stolen permanent resident card.
The permanent resident of Canada and citizen of Britain made it back home to Ottawa this week after Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) realized her application for emergency travel couldn’t be submitted through their online portal because she had too many supporting documents.
After her story was published, dozens of people reached out to share their own travel nightmares.
“The reality is that permanent residents are not treated as Canadians when outside of Canada,” wrote one person.
Anyone hoping to fly without their permanent resident card has to apply for a special travel document, a process another traveller called “appalling and totally unnecessary, not to mention extremely costly.”
Each outlined their own concerns, from technical issues with the outdated portal to inflexible processes.
Why can’t a permanent resident fly on their passport?
Lawrence Wong, a lawyer who has handled immigration cases since 1991, described the IRCC process as “one-sided.”
“You just feed them with the information and then you wait for their response,” he said.
The government provides no timeline for receiving a permanent resident travel document, which Wong said often depends on where you are in the world.
“The turnaround time could be quite long sometimes. We’ve seen cases where people actually have to wait five or six months,” he said.
Wong and other immigration lawyers have one main piece of advice to avoid the long wait: fly to the United States and drive across the border.
“That is something that the Canadian government doesn’t want people to know,” he said. “The reason why that land border route is always available is that we have to recognize PR status when the [permanent residents] are on Canadian soil.
“Even though you don’t have the papers, they have to let you in.”
Walking off a plane on a layover at a Canadian airport also works, he said, though it’s rarely practical.
Wong said forcing people to file an application allows IRCC to examine the permanent resident’s history and potentially renege that status.
Back from Mexico with $40K in debt
When Poonam McMullin lost her permanent resident card while on a trip to Mexico last December, she didn’t immediately panic.
The long-time Ottawa resident saw no reason why her British passport couldn’t get her on a plane home from Mexico.
She was mistaken.
Despite a pending application for a travel document and evidence of her residency status, Canadian immigration officials instructed check-in staff to bar McMullin from the flight.
“We were just infuriated because I’m British. I have a British passport. We’re part of the Commonwealth,” she said. “It felt like we were being shut out of our own country.”
McMullin and her husband booked the winter getaway at the same resort where the pair had been married, using a discount that made the high-end accommodations affordable.
Then they felt trapped there.
Since she’d put that address on her application to IRCC and couldn’t find a way to change it, McMullin was concerned about what would happen if a courier attempted to make a delivery there when she was at a different accommodation.
“It was absolutely nuts,” she said. “We were there in total for five weeks, just constantly waiting, constantly having to extend our trip.”
They spent only a short part of their trip at a cheaper hotel.
Once IRCC approved the application, she had to go through one more bureaucratic hurdle. Since she isn’t a citizen, she can’t enter the embassy.
Instead he had to hire VFS Global, a company contracted by the Canadian government to process courier documents.
By the time she realized she could have just crossed the U.S. land border, her passport was effectively in limbo.
Mullin struggled to get any updates from VFS Global. Responses were automated and in Spanish, saying only that her application was “in process.”
Beyond paying for their additional four-week stay in Mexico, the McMullins had to take leave from their jobs and wracked up kenneling costs for their dog, sky-high phone payments and fees for bills that went unpaid.
Now the two are focused on clearing over $40,000 in debt.
“We were so angry,” she said. “Once we got back, we just wanted to put it behind us and just get back to normal life.”
Urgent case put on back burner
Wei Yue said taking his eyes off his bag at a Mexico tourist attraction was a “rookie” travel mistake.
When that bag was stolen, it cost him personally and financially.
“It was supposed to be just a bit over a week and then I got stuck there for four additional weeks,” he said, arriving back in Canada just last month.
IRCC’s application process was cumbersome, he said, but relatively fast.
“The struggle really started because then I had to send it to the company that the Canadian government is working with,” he said.
VFS Global was in charge of sending Yue’s passport to the embassy and then sending it back to Yue with the emergency document inside.
“No updates. I called daily; no one knew where my documents were,” he said.
He was told that applications are processed on a “first in, first out” basis and that even if IRCC considers a case urgent, VFS Global cannot prioritize it.
The company confirms that is the case.
“VFS Global’s role is limited to non-judgmental administrative tasks only,” it told CBC News, adding that it “does not control processing times.”
After almost three weeks of accumulated processing time and hundreds of emails, Yue said his only option was to go “full Karen” — realizing that the only way to get action was to advocate for himself.
Yue found and contacted VFS Global executives through LinkedIn.
“Suddenly within 24 hours my passport appeared and it was sent to me the next day,” he explained, noting that all of the staff he dealt with were “trying to help” but were “bottlenecked by processes and procedures.”
After Yue returned to Montreal, VFS Global told him there would be an “internal investigation” into his case.
While Yue missed weeks of work and wracked up considerable costs in Mexico, he was most concerned about an important appointment he missed: his Canadian citizenship exam.
IRCC was able to reschedule it, and Yue hopes to be sworn in soon.
Dealing with regret
Laura Anthony had hoped to travel to her native Wales late last year to see a loved one who had fallen ill.
Instead, she returned to the U.K. for her loved one’s funeral.
“COVID-19 had prevented me from visiting Pat in the last few years,” she said. “Something I will always regret.”
Anthony first attempted to follow the rules and stay in Canada until she received her renewed permanent resident card.
But when the document became trapped in transit by a strike of Canada Post workers, she could no longer wait.
“I was desperate. I had to go,” she said. “It was a funeral I couldn’t miss, you know?”
Anthony left Puslinch, Ont., in December and flew to Wales, hoping an email confirming that her renewal application had been approved would satisfy border agents.
Once the funeral was over, she found out it did not.
“I was devastated. I was in tears. It’s hard enough going home for a funeral and then knowing you’re missing Christmas with your family because you can’t come back,” she said.
Anthony knew she could travel through the U.S., but didn’t want to pay that added expense.
Even without it, she and her partner needed $10,000 to pay for added expenses of the additional two weeks abroad.
“The loss [of Pat] was bigger for me, but this problem — this problem — just made the loss that much worse,”she said.
Hoping for the best
Sieghard and Jacqueline Weitzel should have been able to receive her new permanent resident card with plenty of time before they left for Europe.
She applied on Feb. 12, and the card was mailed out six days later — just not to the right address.
Where the Weitzels live in B.C., Canada Post delivers only to P.O. boxes, and IRCC had sent the letter to their street address.
“I think it’s a dereliction of duty on the government’s side to send such important documents just in a simple letter mail,” said Sieghard, who hopes IRCC will consider an option to pay more for courier service.
Then he learned that rectifying the mistake would take time.
“IRCC told us that we could not apply for a new card to be sent out until six weeks had passed from the day the original was sent,” he said, but added there was a silver lining.
The Swiss Embassy agreed to issue his wife a Schengen visa without it, so the pair could fly out as scheduled.
He’s also confident that the three weeks they are in Germany will be long enough to receive the document she needs to get back to Canada with her Philippine passport.
Help scaling a bureaucratic wall
Saskia Tomkins had her permanent resident card when she left her home in Cobourg, Ont., but by the time she arrived in Ireland it was gone.
“As you can imagine, I panicked,” she said. “I’m a musician, and I was going on a tour with my band, which was sponsored by [the Canada Council for the Arts] … So I had a deadline I had to get back for.”
She soon learned it could take months to apply for, and get, the necessary travel document.
“It’s a crazy bureaucratic system. It takes a lot of documents. And I had to get my kid who’s at home to go and find things and screenshot them,” she said. “I was sending emails. I was trying to find out how long it would take, and it was like throwing questions at a brick wall.”
Luckily, though, she did get help.
After contacting the office of her member of Parliament, the application was pushed through.
“If we hadn’t had the nous to contact our MP’s office, I would have lost everything,” she said.
Response from VFS Global
In all of these cases, VFS Global provided services on behalf of the Government of Canada.
The company, which calls itself the world’s leading outsourcing and technology service specialist, runs dozens of visa application centres for Canada across multiple continents.
In Mexico, it runs a centre on behalf of another group contracted by the government: TT Visa Services.
VFS Global did not provide an interview to CBC, but answered questions by email.
It outlined its role in delivering documents to and from embassies for non-citizens, emphasizing that it has “no role” in expediting applications.
When asked how an applicant can reach VFS Global, the statement pointed to an online tracking system.
CBC also reached out to IRCC with questions about its relationship with VFS Global.
It did not provide an interview or comments before deadline.
