My name is Ahmed Aboushady. Me, my wife and my two daughters are permanent residence of Canada since ----. Last -----we travelled to ------and my wife had to give the birth of our baby boy Adam outside Canada because of her health issues which could put the whole pregnancy at risk if she travelled during the pregnancy. We didn’t think that could be an issue till we applied for my son’s visitor visa (Application number: V304305946 UCI: 91793250 ) when he was 4 months old son (at the date of application which was submitted on May 30,2014). We thought of this as the quickest way to bring our son to Canada as visitor and then we will apply to sponsor him. Actually we didn’t have any other choice specially we had spent already about a year outside Canada and we knew that we needed to fulfil residence requirements in order not to violate the permanent residence terms. Two months later and when my son was 6 months old we were shocked to know that my son’s visa got rejected and we did not know what to do, should we let our immigration to Canada go and forget about it after all what we have been through or should we move and try to find a solution. We were astonished to know that there is no specific route for dependent children and they are included under the same visa section like any other family sponsorship which consists of two stages. We understood it can take up to 22 months (even more) to get an entry visa for our son.

Considering the time taken to process the application for sponsorships, if my wife or me had decided to stay with our baby in Egypt we would have violated the permanent residence requirements. So we took the harsh decision of moving to Canada with our 5 and 4 year old girls, leaving our months old baby boy behind. Our daughters are missing their brother, not eating well and crying all of sudden and they keep talking to their teachers about him and why he is not here with us. They see photos of him and videos shared by our family members who are talking care of him in Egypt and they keep asking why he can not be with us but we can not give them a satisfactory answer.

Now it is hard for us to imagine how the country which we decided to immigrate to thinking that it believes human rights , can not allow an infant to accompany his family to what they now call a new home. We think this is against every Canadian value and contrary to what is being promoted about living in Canada and how the Canadian government thinks and reacts.

Think about a mother leaving her child in country now with unstable conditions to the extent that the Canadian embassy in Cairo is shut down because of security issues. This tells us nothing else than the painful fact that Canada is worried about its counsels because they are Canadians but not about my son whom we were forced to leave behind. Our family is shattered and I can only think of how raciest the policies of immigration in Canada are as I couldn’t find another excuse. If this country supports immigrants , they could have created an expedite application for cases like mine.