Does Canada hate me?

This is a long story, but it's the story about how Canada treats immigrants - even though they're law abiding people who have invested their lives into the country, and even though they've tried to do everything the right way. It's my story, but it's also the story of my Canadian fiancée Jenn, and our son - Canadian-born Dexter - Jenn's oldest son Ewan, the story of how I have been blessed with the most amazing wonderful family and how government bureaucracy is going to make it a nightmare by tearing us apart and sending us broke. All I ask for is a work permit so I can stay at the job I already have with the company that has already made a significant investment my training, support my family and pay for the house I bought. If they won't issue me one it will ruin a whole family.

I guess the only logical way to start this is at the beginning, over a decade ago. With a young man, in his early twenties, on the mend from a difficult relationship break up. I was half way through a computer science degree at a University in New Zealand when I randomly received a message through ICQ from a Canadian girl, Jenn,  a few years younger than me who had also recently been through a tough break up. ICQ was a very new thing and Jenn was looking for people she knew who might be using it. Some years before had met a young man in Canada with the same first name as me, Blair, from New Zealand and had thought that he might be someone interesting to talk to online.

That person Jenn had met in Canada, however, was not me. Regardless of that we had a lot in common and built a strong online friendship and talked to each other often and about everything. The years passed and we were never able to meet each other for various reasons some of which include my university education, other relationships, jobs, and family commitments. Ten years later, we were still talking online. There had been periods when we hadn’t spoken to each other - but neither of us could deny that we continued to gravitate to each other despite the distance and the years.

In 2013, I was finally in a position where I was able to plan to come to Canada on an extended holiday and truly put our feelings to the test. On the 2nd of February Jenn met me at Pearson international airport in Toronto Canada. It did not take long for us to realise that our feelings were real and we wanted to spend the rest of our lives together.

During the ten years before we met,  Jenn had a child and was married briefly to Chris, the child's father. For the sake of Ewan, her son, Jenn stuck with the marriage for two years to try and make it work  - but she was unhappy. She told me that she cried on her wedding day and told her bridal party it was because she wished it was me she was marrying. By the time I arrived in Canada, Jenn had been separated from Chris for a couple of years. Ewan is now 6 years old and his father is still a part of his life - and he's the reason we, as a family, must remain in Canada.

I had only been in Canada for around three months when Jenn's birth control failed and she became pregnant. After much discussion and debate we decided to keep our child, despite worrying it was too soon into our relationship. I asked her to marry me after we had been living together for around six months and without hesitation she said yes. I obtained a working holiday visa valid for 12 months, got a job as a programmer and I purchased a house in Canada so that my family - including Jenn's oldest son - would have a place to live. I returned to New Zealand and paid near $10,000 to have my possessions shipped to Canada. In the meantime, Jenn - now my fiancée - had to leave her job due to pregnancy based sickness. Because she has some debt and no employment I had to obtain a mortgage on my own which was extremely difficult with a temporary status in Canada. This is where things started turning bad.

The house I purchased was about 10 minutes drive out of the city that we had been living in, and 10 minutes further from where her ex husband and Ewan’s father lives. At this point in time her ex-husband (Chris)  had been homeless. He'd previously been living in the marital home his parents had bought for he and Jenn when they were married. But after she moved out, Chris stopped paying the property tax until it was somewhere around $17k in arrears. That's when his parents evicted him and sold the house out from under him. 

He had months and months of notice to sort out living arrangements for himself and his son so the week about custody arrangement could continue. However, he did not do that and instead left his son living full time with us for three months. Despite this he decided to take exception to us moving ten minutes out of the city and filed for full custody of his son and an interim order to prevent the child’s school being shifted to the school in our local area. His parents purchased a one bedroom inner city apartment for him to aid his chances in the custody case. Basically everything went our way in the case as the judges could see through his actions, however that did not change the fact that above the costs the judge has awarded to us it has still put us somewhere around $30,000 further in debt. My fiancée and her ex are now discussing settlement options to end the court proceedings so hopefully that debt will cease to increase, but we are still left with that sizeable debt to pay back.

I lost the job I had because of the time off I took due to Jenn's severe pregnancy sickness resulting in trips to the hospital to check the health of both mother and child, and the times when I had to be present for the court proceedings. I found a job working on-call as a labourer to try to pay the bills but I was not earning enough to prevent our debts growing. Eventually, I found another programming job, which is not an easy feat in my situation. Employers are not super enthusiastic about taking someone on and investing the time for training in someone with an uncertain future in the country. This job was working for a large company through a recruiter. The expiration of my work permit was looming when I was offered a year long extension for the position. I asked the recruiter to obtain an labour market impact assessment to aid my application for a work permit but since I am not a full time internal employee for that company they were unable or unwilling to get one for me.

The company I actually program for was legally unable to obtain this for me since they are not legally my employer either. So it was decided that I could apply for an open work permit as a sole proprietor which would not require the labour market impact assessment. I submitted my applications with details for the position and a large description of the software I have spent years developing on my own time, and is nearing completion. I plan to build my own company around the software I have developed but I need to be able to support myself and my family in the mean time. My work permit application included all this information stating that I want to start my own business and work as a sole proprietor or freelancer until my business is built up enough to support my family. I submitted this application before my work permit expired which meant that I was able to continue working on an implied status while it was processed. I assisted my fiancée in returning to work by pushing a little to get her a job in the support department. She got the position and started training almost a month after I submitted my application.

Three days after Jenn started working again I received a response to my application saying that my application had been refused as my employer did not provide a labour market opinion and if I was still working I must stop that day. After many phone calls to Citizenship and immigration Canada I found out that if I believed there had been a mistake on my application I could write to them to have it reviewed which I did. I wrote a long letter explaining that my application was for a self employed position and perhaps I should have made that more clear as obviously I can't employ a Canadian to be me. I find it a little crazy that the government would not be able to see that I am being offered the contact on the sole basis that I have experience in that exact position already, how could anyone else Canadian or otherwise fill that same position unless they already has the training and experience that I do working in that position. It is a specific programming job working with an obscure language and to quote the head of the programming department there "We have never found or employed anyone who knew that language before".

After two weeks of being unable to work I contacted them to find out if they had received my letter of explanation. The phone representatives were unable to tell and recommended that I email it and it should be processed within 24 hours. I did as I was told but received nothing back. Around four days later I called again and was informed that the email address was wrong and that it needed to have a specific subject in the email to be processed quickly. I sent another email with the information once again with the required subject and submitted it to both email addresses because it all seemed so vague.

Three days later we finally arrive at the present. Still no word about a review of my application and I called again to find out what is going on and if there is yet again something they failed to tell me that I needed to do. After this agent  reviewed everything he told me that I had to send it in the mail as I originally did and that nothing may come of it. They may decide not to look at it and I may never hear anything about it again. I should just send another application, pay again and potentially have that refused after waiting another month for it to be processed this time without being able to work.

I feel rather stuck. Even though Jenn is working now, the money she earns is not enough to pay the mortgage, the bills, and the debts we have accumulated. I have been off work for three weeks already waiting  to hear anything back about this and we can’t afford for me to be off work for another month while another application is processed. Even if I was to leave my family behind and return to New Zealand to work for 9 or 10 months until my permanent residence application passes the first stage approval, it may take longer than a month to get back there and find employment, not only that but I will somehow have to be earning enough to pay living expenses in New Zealand, and a mortgage in Canada, plus property tax on my house. The thought of being out of Jenn and Dexter's life for that period of time feels like the end of the world to me but I am rapidly approaching the point where there is no other option.

What are the options here for Jenn? How do things turn out for the three Canadian citizens tied to this. The two options here for her are to let me go and become a solo mum for a year, working all day then looking after the kids alone nights and weekends. Or does she get a second job to be able to pay all the bills and support me while I am unable to work? For her it's either become super mum or never actually see or get to spend time with the kids.
I totally understand and support Canada’s position on protecting Canadians by requiring the labour market impact assessment and not just handing out work permits to anyone who comes along. But I am not just someone who decided I want to live in Canada. If it wasn’t for Jenn, a Canadian, and my Canadian born son I would already be back in New Zealand working. If Jenn didn’t have a son who had to remain in Canada for his father, we would most likely be living in New Zealand now where Jenn probably wouldn’t be having this extreme amount of stress just to be able to work. I sent my permanent residence application as soon as I could and if the application process in Canada didn’t have such a ridiculous wait time I might have already passed the first stage approval and might already be eligible for an open work permit on that basis. The most ridiculous thing of all to me is that a foreigner accompanying another foreigner with a work permit is eligible for an open work permit while they are here. However, a foreigner accompanying a Canadian citizen in Canada, even with a child who is also a Canadian citizen is not eligible for that same work permit. I hoped that the person assessing my work permit application would take all of the factors into consideration and show some compassion for my family of Canadian citizens who depend on my income for day to day survival, but apparently that is not the case. My residence application does not have first stage approval, and I don’t have an employer who can provide me with a labour market impact assessment so the government will not allow me to support my family. I was given 90 days to submit another application or leave the country immediately if I am not going to submit another application. 

I don't know what to do. Leaving my family makes this worse on all fronts, but to stay I have to pay $350 to apply for temporary residence and I would not be able to work. I could look for another job with an employer who would support a work permit application, and I have been talking to another recruiter who would do what it took to be able to support my application to put me back in that same position but three weeks have already passed and the company can’t wait for me forever, eventually they just have to write me off as a bad investment. Why does the Canadian government need to be paid $1000 for a labour market impact assessment, and require a job opening to be posted for 2 or 3 months on their website before they know that it is impossible to replace a programmer who already has experience working for that company?

Getting a straight answer from Canadian immigration is impossible. Maybe an immigration lawyer would be able to help me but the ones I have talked to state that by the end of it I would owe them somewhere around $5000 and we simply can’t even afford to pay the retainer right now. We need me to be working again urgently before we are bankrupted. I just want to know if there's anyone that can help or at least help to get answers from Citizenship and Immigration Canada. I would like the people that make the immigration rules and force employees to evaluate applications on very set rules that I don't believe fits the situation in every case be forced to actually see the stress and damage this can do to hard working honest people.