Those assigned to Canadian immigration officer ‘DM10032’ are finally getting permanent residency after years-long wait.

After being stuck in immigration limbo for years, immigration applicants in Nigeria and around the world who had permanent residency applications assigned to one Canadian immigration officer — notoriously known among them as a worker who’s fallen “asleep,” “useless”, or idle — are finally seeing significant movement on their files.

Some immigrant hopefuls have even landed in Canada in the past few weeks while others are booking one-way tickets with newly stamped passports in hand — only a couple of months after they told their stories about the torturous wait under an officer only known to them as code “DM10032.”

The officer had left their applications largely untouched for years, prompting questions about their employee status or even the person’s existence.

Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) confirmed that DM10032 was an active employee but didn’t explain why scores of applicants assigned to this officer were left in the dark since they applied to become permanent residents in 2019. It said it doesn’t “comment on personal details.”

Now it appears the department has largely cleared a backlog of permanent residency (PR) applicants waiting for more than two years under DM10032.

“As soon as this story got published, we discovered that the officer … began to work on these files,” said Oluwaseun Adewolu, who had her residency finalized in the past couple of months after nearly a three-year wait.

“Two months after … literally everyone in my WhatsApp group has all gotten PPR [passport requests]. We have quite a number of people from that same group that are going to land [in Canada] this weekend.”

Adewolu, who is a member of several social media groups created around Canada’s immigration delays and DM10032, said she knows more than 30 applicants assigned to that officer who have had significant movement on their files in the past two months.

Adewolu’s family left Nigeria and landed in Winnipeg in March. She has registered her children in school and has been doing job interviews.

“It’s been three weeks but to a large extent, I’ve seen the glamour, I’ve seen the reality of Canada, I’ve seen how welcoming the country is.”

‘The wait is killing us,’ says family

“It’s been very depressing, like I go to sleep most nights very sad. I think I’ve lost a bit of myself,” said Ikechukwu Uketui, an optometrist in Nigeria. He applied in November 2019 and his file was assigned to officer code “AB14712.”

“It really breaks me mentally, sometimes I just cry … I just can’t wait for it to be over.”

Source: Afrotimes Newspaper https://www.facebook.com/AfrotimesNewspaper/photos/a.119381757440035/126521953392682/