Sugar planned her hair style this week – she asked for a braid to come down to her nose!

She really likes it when they come down near her face, but I’m not that keen on it.  So this was the compromise~ Meanwhile, the veil braids on Spice looked great.  40 minutes record on those puppies – I was rushing us off to dance class.  She sure held still, too!

Feel free to borrow from my letter if you like.

February-4-10
RE: Alarming Processing Time at HC Nairobi

Dear Minister Kenney;

This is the third letter we have written to your office in two years about the processing times for visas and citizenship paperwork from the Canadian High Commission in Nairobi. The first letter to your predecessor actually produced some results; for a short time immigration work in the Kenya office sped up. But last year it slowed again. Recently, the Canadian Council for Refugees published a report, Nairobi: Protection Delayed, Protection denied, highlighting the extraordinarily long processing times at the Nairobi visa office. I hope this third letter will result in some permanent positive change.

As parents of children from Ethiopia, we have watched the immigration process change and evolve over the last few years. It is discriminatory, intentionally or not, that the same visa and citizenship processes should take a fraction of the amount of time in other High Commissions throughout the world, while some of the world’s most vulnerable people in the 18 countries HC Nairobi serves should wait. And wait. And wait.

For children being adopted to Canadian families, this means more time in institutional care and less time growing in a healthy family. For refugees, however, this wait can mean no healthcare, no access to education, and exposure to despair and violence while languishing in refugee camps. Even for sponsored children (family class), the average processing time (24 months) is almost 5 times the global average of 5 months. It’s shameful and unfair.

HC Nairobi has been chronically understaffed and ignored. It’s time to stop Canada’s discriminatory resource allocation by properly staffing and expanding the capacity at our Canadian High Commission in Nairobi. Alternatively, the Consular Office in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, should be expanded to High Commission status and relieve half of the workload from the Kenyan High Commission.

Will you permanently address this immigration issue? We look forward to your action and your reply.

Most sincerely;

CC: Immigration critics; Ron Cannan, MP; Prime Minister Stephen Harper

If you’ve been following my blog for a while, you’ve probably heard, at least one two major occasions, that action is needed to speed up the immigration process at the Canadian High Commission in Nairobi, Kenya. 17 African countries’ visa and citizenship documents are processed through the HC, and the timelines are notoriously long.  What takes a week for adoptees in at the Canadian HC in China takes months at HC Nairobi.  It’s crazy.  The commission is chronically understaffed, and as a result, East African applications are consistently segregated against, due to the wait.  If you think adoption timelines are crazy, you should try tto be a professional or a refugee family trying to immigrate. (Read a press release here, or the full report here.) It’s crazy. and it is not fair.

So please polish off your pens again!  Let’s try to make some permanent change this time, instead of a bandaid for a few months. Let’s see if we can help East African refugees get treated with equality by our immigration system. (Thanks to Chris for the instructions below.)

“I believe it is important that we advocate this time for those whose voices are not as loud as our voices. If Nairobi is better resourced, which is what we are asking for, it could potentially benefit our Ethiopian children as well. Here are the simple steps that we can follow to take action on this issue:

1) Cut and paste the letter at the end of this post into an email.

2) Send the email to the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration, Jason Kenney, at Kenney.J@parl.gc.ca  and Minister@cic.gc.ca  

3) Copy your own Member of Parliament on the email. Using your postal code, you can find her/his email address here. 

If you feel strongly about this issue, there are a couple of easy additional steps that you can take to help ensure our message gets heard:

4) At this time, the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration is actually studying the issue of immigration application process wait times. The long visa wait times of the High Commission in Nairobi in particular have recently been raised at Standing Committee hearings. Please copy the following Standing Committee members on the email to the Minister as well:
tilson.d@parl.gc.ca; BevilM@parl.gc.ca; chowo@parl.gc.ca; StcyrT@parl.gc.ca; Calandra.P@parl.gc.ca; GrewaN@parl.gc.ca; ThilaE@parl.gc.ca; karygj@parl.gc.ca; Wong.A@parl.gc.ca; DykstR@parl.gc.ca; Mendes.A@parl.gc.ca; Young.T@parl.gc.ca

5) Please call Minister Kenney’s office to ask CIC to act on the recommendations from the Canadian Council for Refugees report on the immigration application processing times at the High Commission in Nairobi. The Minister’s office can be reached by phone at 613-954-1064. This is a very quick and simple call to make. The person you speak to will simply note your comment, but all phone calls they receive are logged and the more calls the Minister’s Office receives on an issue, the more likely the issue will be viewed as a priority and addressed.

Here is the letter for copying and pasting / personalizing”:

Subject line: Application processing times at the Canadian High Commission in Nairobi

Dear Minister Kenney,

I am the parent/grandparent/friend of a child adopted from Ethiopia. I have read of the Canadian Council for Refugee’s report on the Canadian High Commission in Nairobi, which processed my child’s visa.

I am distressed to learn of the High Commission’s processing times for its most vulnerable applicants. I am embarrassed as a Canadian to read in the report some of the personal stories of refugees and their dependants who are enduring significant hardships, and in some cases tragedy, as they wait years for their applications to be reviewed by your clearly overburdened visa officers in Nairobi.

The Canadian Council for Refugees says that, “immigration officers working there are asked to do the impossible.” I could not agree more and want to lend my voice to encouraging the Government of Canada to stop the neglect of this overseas mission and the many very vulnerable individuals and families it serves.

CIC-Nairobi’s processing times for refugees and refugee dependants are approximately double the average for all of Canada’s overseas missions. In fact, CIC-Nairobi’s processing times for almost all other immigration categories lag dramatically behind the global average for Canada’s overseas missions. This situation is hardly fair or just, especially given that it impacts some of the most at-risk people Canada’s overseas missions serve.

I would like to strongly encourage Citizenship and Immigration Canada to act on the following recommendations from the Canadian Council for Refugee’s report:

- increase resources (both human and material) at Nairobi;
- increase processing targets allocated to Nairobi;
- reduce the number of countries served by Nairobi by using or creating other visa posts in the region to take on some of the burden of Nairobi; and
- review refugee and immigration programs to ensure that access is equitable and that Canadian anti-discrimination and anti-racism policies are fully respected.

Your spokesman’s recent comments regarding the High Commission’s processing times seem to indicate that the Government of Canada feels no sense of urgency to address this situation. While acknowledging that this region is beset with many special obstacles, Canada is clearly failing to meet these unique challenges with unique solutions. The only conclusion that can be drawn is that those with the power in Ottawa to address this situation simply do not care to make resourcing decisions that would better support and protect vulnerable families.

In closing, I urge you to extend our Canadian values of fairness and compassion to vulnerable waiting families and to search for solutions to the issues currently facing the High Commission in Nairobi.

Sincerely,

Your name
Your address

We’ve been slowly trying to tick off the to do list… dentist, eye doctor, public health nurse for vaccines,  attachment counsellor, notary for name change, etc. etc. There are a lot of professionals you need to see when you get home with kids from a different country!

So last week I had my tooth fixed and the girls came along (with daddy) and watched the dentist do it.  They rode up and down on the chair and got stickers. And a couple days ago they went for their fluoride treatments.  We figured we should get them into the dentist in the next month or so, but this would help in the meanwhile.  Well, after a look around their mouths the dental hygienist spotted 1 big cavity in Spice’s mouth, plus some discolourations, as well as three cavities in Sugar’s mouth.  Yikes.  She suggested a pediatric dentist who has hospital rights so he can put them under to do the filling.  Wowsers.

Getting the brushing demo.

Anyway, I also learned that we are supposed to brush the kids’ teeth at least once a day until they can write themselves.  Things that are news to new parents.  I mean, they brush twice a day and we were doing spot checks every couple of days, but not every day.  However, most probably the kids developed the cavities long before we came around.  There was a post about this on a discussion group the other day, and I suppose we’re lucky they just have the four cavities! And thank goodness for dental coverage….

PS: you can tell by the hats it was braiding day! lol

Of course all of you who have kids know this, but I feel like venting anyway.

Sugar has a snotty nose and what appears to be the early onslaught of an eye infection, so she’s bullish and indifferent this morning.  Spice had a bad dream last night and didn’t seem to sleep well after.  She’s whinging and wimpy and fed up with the general injustice of the world.

I didn’t sleep much either. I stupidly had one of those International Delight drinks before supper and the caffeine kept me tossing until at least 11pm.  Then the midnight visit and backrubs by the bedside after Spice’s bad dream pretty much annihilated any solid sleep last night.

I plunk them in the tub, hoping to distract them with floating styrofoam toys, but the water’s too hot (same temperature as always) and they don’t want to stay in the tub. Once they’re clothed, I try to escape into the bathtub myself with lavender and A Year in the World dangled above the water. But cat screeches, sqawks and brawny “Mommmmyyyyyy!”s permeate the door.  How many times do I have to step out of the water and leave wet footprints across the hallway to break up a fight or take away the offending laundry hamper they’re determined not to share?  I have no idea how parents with kids who fight all the time do it.  I just want to join in.

Finally pruned and through a chapter, I step into the hall.  They’re sprawled on the floor like a two-headed Chimera in their matching pink rose-covered hoodies. “Can we have a snack?”

“Sure.”

Three minutes of quiet while they munch on oranges and apples, trading bites back and forth.  Please let this day be over soon.