EDMONTON - More than three months has passed and International students of Alberta are still waiting to for their study permit renewal so they can leave Canada and visit their home countries or travel somewhere else.
There have been long delays during the process of study permit renewal and students cannot take the risk of leaving country without having their renewed study permit in hand.
Citizenship and Immigration Canada has notices the complexity and the large number of applications to be one of the delay causes.
It’s been more than three months now, but a third year PHD student in sociology at University of Alberta, Marcella Cassiano, haven’t received her renewed study permit while at the time when she had submitted her application, the wait time has been announced to be 44 days only.
In spite of holding the “implied status”, Chinese embassy has refused to issue her visa so that she can follow her schedule to study on a visiting scholarship at a Chinese university in September.
Although Cassiano believes the delays and wait times have negative consequences such as competitive difficulty for international students, but Citizenship and Immigration Canada suggests that students should apply at least 30 days before their current study permit expires.
She also offers that, since International graduate students are very mobile people, short processing time for document renewals by Canada, can help them to be more successful in the global business of international education.
On the other side, Nancy Caron, a spokeswoman for C.I.C. informs that the one of the main reasons of delays, apart from complexity and the large number of applications received, are known to be incomplete or wrongly filled applications. Statistics shows study permit renewal process of 39 days or less in 2014.
