Bashar Kassir was thrilled when his parents were issued immigration visas in December to join him in Canada after they waited four years in war-torn Syria.
But the documents came too late for Kassir’s father, the principal applicant on the sponsorship. He died of a stroke on March 28, while settling his affairs in Aleppo and arranging for the trip to Canada. He was 74.
Only after the Toronto Star launched inquiries into their case, can Kassir's widowed mother finally make the journey to her son in Toronto.
That’s because the elderly couple’s permanent-resident visas were cancelled by Canadian Citizenship and Immigration when Kassir's father died. His widow was told she must reapply for a visa under the family sponsorship program for parents.
“The timing of the death couldn’t be worse. Aleppo is pretty much under siege, and we expect the city to fall into the rebels’ hands. I flipped a coin and chose my dad to be the principal applicant. If the coin was on the other side, my mom would’ve had no problem coming,” said Kassir.
“I don’t understand why the government would rather keep my mother in a war zone and spend extra money on processing the same application and issuing the same visa again. It just doesn’t make any sense.”
After the Star inquired, the family received a surprise email July 1 from the Canadian visa post in Jordan which said the new application had been processed and the new visa was ready for Fahima Rafek, 73, in Beirut.
Getting his mother out safely presents another challenge. There are no more direct flights between Aleppo and Lebanon, which has restricted admission of Syrians at the border.
With internet services broken down in Aleppo, Kassir must find a way to get the immigration confirmation letter to his mother, then find a driver to escort the elderly woman on the half-day trip to Beirut.
Kassir said he did his due diligence by notifying immigration officials immediately after the death of his father, Elias Kassir, on March 28. In mid-April, he received a reply from Citizenship and Immigration Canada’s Ottawa processing centre, instructing him to send his mother’s passport in with her valid visa for “cancellation.”
“The immigration and protection regulations require that the (principal) applicant land prior to accompanying dependants. As your mother was the dependent, she cannot land with the documentation she has now,” said the email dated April 16.
Although no new application fees were required, the letter directed Kassir to submit a new sponsorship undertaking, along with his father’s death certificate.
Kassir said he submitted a new application for his mother a week later and was assigned a new file number May 1. The family had not heard from immigration officials until the Star’s inquiry this week on its behalf, he said.
The delay has added to Kassir’s agony over the ordeal. His parents’ sponsorship application was refused last year because they failed to respond to officials’ request for further documentation in letters which the family insisted they never received.
That application, however, was reopened after a Star story documented the misery of the family as a result of the allegedly missing mail.