After I was placed with Hayley last July the adoption agency (CAFAC) told me that it was taking five to six months between placement and travel which is why I thought I would be going on mat leave in January or February. Each step of the way has taken longer than previously. It took longer to get a medical. Longer to get a court date. Longer to prepare the documents to send to Canadian Immigration at Nairobi.
The papers arrived at Canadian Immigration in Nairobi in February. Usually it is 8 to 12 weeks for processing and then the Visa is issued. At that time CAFAC had ten families on about the same timeline and figured we would be travelling together so they put us in a "travel group" and gave us all each other's email addresses.
In April CAFAC received a letter from Canadian Immigration in Nairobi that was sent by regular snail-mail asking for an updated photo of Hayley. The letter had been in the mail on the slow boat to Canada for four weeks! The adoption agency was in regular e-mail contact with Canadian Immigration in Nairobi at the time and was completely flummoxed that this request had been snail-mailed rather than e-mailed. CAFAC got an updated photo to Nairobi within 24 hours.
Finally in May people from the "travel group" began to receive Visas. However, Hayley's was not among them. Five of the ten families have now travelled and many other families whose paperwork arrived in Nairobi after Hayley's have travelled. This now left five families in the original travel group still waiting for Visas. CAFAC is completely at a loss as to why these Visas are being delayed. They cannot get straight answers from Nairobi. They cannot find any commonality among the files. This problem has not occurred before to this extent and they are in unchartered waters.
On June 24th the other four families left in the "travel group" received notification from Canadian Immigration in Nairobi that their files had been sent to the "investigative office." No one seems to know what this is or what that means. Apparently it means there was some anomaly in the file immigration wants to look into. However, despite the fact that Hayley's file is among the oldest there, I did not receive notification that her file was sent to the "investigative office."
I phoned CAFAC to ask about it and they said they can't explain it. I said, "well, is Hayley's file not on this list because her Visa issuance is imminent or because her file fell down behind someone's desk?"
"I don't know," CAFAC responded. "We'll look into it." So far, CAFAC has not gotten a response from Immigration.
That's where things stand as of now,
Tisha
