Archives (27th March 2018): Friends of Tahir: updates

01/12/18 03:10

It has been a while… so it is time for a short update on progress of Tahir’s case, and general update on how we are here in Bangkok.

First of all, some of you know that we have had some positive development on Tahir’s resettlement on Canada front. After many, many months of waiting, around 10 weeks ago, we received an email from the Canadian authorities urging Tahir to report to the Embassy of Canada to Thailand for an interview. Obviously, this made us extremely excited, but also nervous, as the above mentioned interview, in many ways, one of the two most important steps of the resettlement process. The interviews are meant to confirm that decisions of granting an applicant a right to resettle to Canada are justified, and cross-check information that applicants provide in their applications are actually truthful and genuine.

Although, Tahir and I were quite confident that things should go well and right, given that Tahir’s case is genuine and had been explained in various documents of the application pack, we were also nervous. Being a bit of a drama queen myself, I immediately was able to work out at least 10 catastrophic scenarios what could possibly go wrong, with some options including Tahir’s not being able to get to the embassy due to being unlucky and falling sick, or being detained by the police, or having a really nasty interviewer, whose job was to make Tahir nervous, and find any excuse to turn his application down.

The interview went on for hours… during this time, Tahir did not have access to his phone, and obviously could not communicate with anyone outside of the embassy. As you rightly guessed, I was in absolute panic, and started considering whether I should actually call the embassy to enquire what was happening to him. Luckily, when contemplating some of the stupid actions, Tahir called. His voice sounded happy, which filled me with joy. As I later found out, the interview was very thorough, but extremely friendly. After many, many questions, Tahir was told that the interviewer was satisfied with the answers, and that he should now be awaiting a call for an invitation for his medical check-up – which, de facto, meant that he was successful! There was a lot of joy that followed that evening!

After all of the excitement relating to Tahir’s interview, I was called to travel to Fiji and Tonga in the Pacific to help assessing the humanitarian needs caused by the cyclone that hit the region. While hoping between the islands of the two nations, Tahir was called by the Embassy of Canada again and was asked to visit them for taking his biometric data, which will be used for his vetting and then possibly for his travel documents. The appointment was fixed within a few days, and cleared without any major issues.

So the status for today is that Tahir’s case seems to be accepted for his resettlement to Canada (provisionally), and the final decision will be taken based on his successful clearance of terrorist, security and health vetting. We understand that the actual vetting procedure has started and are now anxious to hear about the outcome sometime soon.

Assuming that we have a positive answer from the Government of Canada, we will be able to start the actual resettlement preparations. Here, we know that there are going to be new and not-so-nice challenges from the Government of Thailand (the Thai authorities are not too keen on letting people go, if they have ‘overstayed’ their visas), but we will be able to overcome them, even if some prospects are not nice at all (I will write you an email on this on another occasion).

On an optimistic note, you should appreciate to read that one of Tahir’s friend (in a similar situation to Tahir) recently managed to arrive to Canada. He was a refugee from Pakistan and he was an Ahmadi, and was sponsored to Canada via the same channel that we are using. He applied for resettlement some months before Tahir, and all things worked for him. As he arrived to Calgary in early March, he is feeling very, very cold, but also equally happy ☺.

So, lots of positive developments, but yet still more challenges to come. Please keep on supporting us, as wonderfully as you have done so far, and on our side, we will keep you updated with the news. You all guys know that without you, and your encouragement, we would not be able to get that far. We both genuinely thank you very, very much, and humbly ask to keep on giving us your strength, advice and all forms of support!
Finally, for many of you, April is a time of festivities, so will be May. Please have the most wonderful time with your families and friends!

Sending hugs and best regards,
Roman and Tahir

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Archives (27th March 2018): Friends of Tahir: updates