Today is the 11th of January, which means that we have to go to the airport to check if there are any news regarding our case. I had insomnia, couldn’t eat in the morning, but we finally went to the airport to be there by 2:30 pm.

CBSA office looks similar to the police station (I haven’t been at any, but I see it that way). The Officer on duty got our documents and checked if we were who we said we were. He looked at D.’s copy of the passport, looked at me, and said: “It’s not you”. Of course, it’s not me; it’s my husband’s ID you are looking at, Officer. Then he asked us about our story, and when we told him, he got confused. He asked D.: “How will I know that it’s you and not your tween brother?” I kind of wanted to cry when I heard this question. Really? Really? How about checking all the supporting documents and biometrics for a change. Then we told him that we have been waiting for a month and a half already, and we really wanted to hear their answer on our case. We also mentioned the last name of the first officer we met upon our arrival here, and luckily he was at the airport that day. The Officer on duty took our documents and went to talk to Officer J. (the one who met us upon our arrival).

After an hour, Officer J. came to us and said there was still no reply from the visa office, but our lawyer convinced him to issue our documents! So, Officer J. decided to issue D. a temporary resident permit, and because of that, he could issue a temporary work permit. Actually, we asked him for the exact same documents when we arrived, but he refused back then. Luckily (we are very grateful), he eventually issued us our papers and gave our passports back with the stamp! We spent an additional $440 CAD ($155 for a new work permit, $200 for a temporary residence permit, $85 for a new biometric). Of course, we didn’t care about the prices; we were just happy to stay here in Canada.

They stamped our passports with today’s date, which means that we left St.Petersburg on the 3d of December 2020 and arrived in Toronto on the 11th of January, 2021.

It was a terribly exhausting and rather useless time, but we are happy that bureaucratic situation was resolved in our favor.

Well, now, we can start to deal with life.