A couple from Cawston, B.C., says government red tape is preventing their family from coming home to Canada.
“When you are stuck in a place that you don’t want to be and you are not allowed to go home, you do feel like a prisoner,” said Jim Bodden.
Bodden and his wife Melissa are in Cancun. Mexico, desperately waiting to be given the green light to fly home with their newly-adopted children.
“There’s like anger, frustration. There is just stress, like so much stress,” Melissa said.
Six months ago the couple adopted four children in Mexico but they can’t bring them home until Immigration Canada issues the children their visas.
“They say they have everything they need and we are still stuck here in limbo waiting to hear anything,” Melissa said.
The Boddens said what’s adding to their frustration is that they went through the rigorous Hague Convention process, which protects children involved in intercountry adoptions.
“Everything was done legally and safely,” Jim Said. “It should be streamlined once we get to the Immigration Canada side of things.”
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The uncertainty has had the family of six jumping from one short term rental to another in Mexico over the last few months not knowing how long they need to secure accommodation for, all while their income back home takes a big hit having to curtail operations on their farm.
“Our income from farming is greatly affected this year, as well as not being home and not able to produce products to sell,” Jim said.
Immigration Canada said it cannot comment on individual cases due to privacy legislation.
In an email to Global News, however, it stated, ‘The processing of citizenship grant applications for adopted persons under 5.1 of the Citizenship Act is completed in two parts.”
Part 1 confirms that at least one adoptive parent is a Canadian citizen and is eligible to pass down their Canadian citizenship to an adopted person(s). The current processing time for Part 1 is approximately seven months, provided all required documents are received.
Part 2 is an assessment of whether the adoption meets the requirements of section 5.1 of the Citizenship Act such as, but not limited to verifying that the adoption complies with the laws of both Canada and the country where it took place, that the adoption is in the best interests of the child and that a genuine parent-child relationship exists. The processing time for Part 2 is typically two years or longer.
“To have Canadian citizens stuck out of country because they won’t sign off on their children, who were legally adopted, and the Province of BC has already approved the adoption, this is pretty unacceptable,” Melissa said.
The couple told Global News they now have three lawyers working to push the case through.
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