Thread for outland Buffalo applicants!

[yooper]

...
ETA: Never, ever have blind faith in Buffalo! I think it's ddbro2 who has the signature line, "Trust by verify."   

I will follow your advice.  Thanks much for info.

[Bargeld]

Indeed.

Actually, mathematically-speaking, I didn't choose what to include and what not to include, I used the formulas and they encompass all the data, "typical" and not so typical. The 3 different averages I used - mean, or sum of all values divided by number of values; median (which value is in the middle if you list them smallest to largest), and mode (which value is the most prevalent) include ALL the values for processing time in their calculations. But being various measure of central tendancy and not of spread, yes, they're not going to represent the extreme values. The mean, however, will be more "influenced" by outliers than the median and mode (it will skew towards them if they are large enough), which is why I included all three. They're not that different though. Like I say, focusing on the average is misleading because there is a large spread in the data.

Oh, and I'm a female  

Not only that we're talking about two different things entirely.

Mean, median, mode, is basic arithmetic. Outliers reference probability distributions, which this is obviously not.

No one should take that as anything more than a general indicator, and it's emphasized quite often that each case is different. The more one sits there and observes/ponders the data, especially with an expected result, the more they open the doors to disappointment since not all applications are equal.

[ddobro2]

Just wanted to mention that for the sake of consistency on the spreadsheet, the "In process" category should be according to e-cas.

Oh I knew it from either email from buffalo or gcms notes...don't remember :p.    But either way it means nothing to me, cuz they havn't done anything with my application yet.

[AmericaninQuebec]

I think so. People processed by different VOs do not have their results in the same medical processing office (Rabat, for instance, requests them from Paris, which is where DMPs know to send results for Moroccan applicants). So I think Ottawa is a particular office within "Immigration Medical Services."

Okay. I will look into getting in touch with them if there's no movement on my file this week. Thanks!

[ddobro2]

I'll be waiting with bated breath  

[snip] and the computer change didn't help at all (confirmed by the officer I talked to while landing... I swear I'll post about that eventually!)

Seriously!

(and to all the MPs who swear up and down "no no no, it's ALWAYS first come, first served! ALWAYS!"... There isn't much I can say here, because it would get censored anyway 

[ddobro2]

I know. Why would you want to have blind faith in any government agency (not that there's anything wrong with government, but it's kind of a given that they're going to have their little moments of inefficiency and incompetence like bureaucracy always does..), but particularly the "Great Buffalo" I think it takes about one page of posts on this thread to give anyone reading it (ok, apart from MPs that want to believe what they believe) the notion that this particular visa office is certainly no stranger to processing debacles, as amaranth put it. I mean if the CBSA worker called them FUBAR......'nuff said, n'est-ce pas?

ETA: Never, ever have blind faith in Buffalo! I think it's ddbro2 who has the signature line, "Trust by verify."   

[ddobro2]

Yep. It hasn't been mentioned as much in recent months but when there were a lot more people from 2010 and early 2011 still waiting and it appeared Marchers were being processed surprisingly quickly, the CAIPS to GCMS transition was blamed for it. CIC had put on its website that GCMS would be implemented by late 2010 or early 2011 (of course it depended a lot on the VO). Some people ordering CAIPS notes received both CAIPS and GCMS. I guess they viewed it as a necessary little disturbance that pre-transition apps had to just "sit tight" through (and they'd get back around to them when they could..... ).

Computer change? I don't recall hearing about that one. I absolutely LOVE when government organizations decide to change their computer systems. Nothing ever seems to work right after that. When did this supposedly happen?

Also, I have a pretty good idea what you'd say to those MPs, and I'm right there with you.  

[diadema]

Hello all, just a quick hello as I throw my hat into the ring with a new set of Buffalo dates:

App sent: 9/12/11
App received: 9/14/11
Transferred to Buffalo: 11/23/11

Here's to a speedy process... right? 

[York Region]

Yep. It hasn't been mentioned as much in recent months but when there were a lot more people from 2010 and early 2011 still waiting and it appeared Marchers were being processed surprisingly quickly, the CAIPS to GCMS transition was blamed for it. CIC had put on its website that GCMS would be implemented by late 2010 or early 2011 (of course it depended a lot on the VO). Some people ordering CAIPS notes received both CAIPS and GCMS. I guess they viewed it as a necessary little disturbance that pre-transition apps had to just "sit tight" through (and they'd get back around to them when they could..... ).

Hello guys, I have a question:)-  my wife and our daughter (age is 2 years old) are Canadians- is it a big advantage, that we have a child already? We got married after our daughter was born. We were common law when the child was born.

[doctorkb]

Computer change? I don't recall hearing about that one. I absolutely LOVE when government organizations decide to change their computer systems. Nothing ever seems to work right after that. When did this supposedly happen?

Also, I have a pretty good idea what you'd say to those MPs, and I'm right there with you. 

Yep. It hasn't been mentioned as much in recent months but when there were a lot more people from 2010 and early 2011 still waiting and it appeared Marchers were being processed surprisingly quickly, the CAIPS to GCMS transition was blamed for it. CIC had put on its website that GCMS would be implemented by late 2010 or early 2011 (of course it depended a lot on the VO). Some people ordering CAIPS notes received both CAIPS and GCMS. I guess they viewed it as a necessary little disturbance that pre-transition apps had to just "sit tight" through (and they'd get back around to them when they could..... ).

I was looking for the CIC web page that gave the transition dates, but it appears to have been removed.

The short answer is that Buffalo's transition occurred in February/March 2011.  Applications that were received in Buffalo prior to that date seemed to take about 3-4 months longer than applications received after that (leading to newer apps being processed before older apps).

Lucky us, our application was received in Buffalo pretty much right before the transition.   There were no CAIPS notes for us, but we were stuck in limbo while they processed applications received after the transition.

[doctorkb]

That's great they actually responded but the "in queue for review by an IO" line is so overused, and frankly, empty. I wish they would stop hiding behind empty rhetoric (hmn, I guess that makes them like politicians then...). It's redic that they are still "waiting on your meds" after all this time (I *believe* that this is the first assessment they work on for someone's file). I would do what doctorkb suggested and start bugging Ottawa Regional Medical Centre. Hang in there!

Ottawa Regional Medical Office
Health Management Branch
Citizenship and Immigration Canada
219 Laurier Ave. West, 3rd floor
Ottawa, ON K1A 1L1
Fax: +1 613 954 6211

Here is the text of the letter we faxed:

Client ID       XXXX-XXXX
Medical File Number    XXXX-RXXXXXX
Buffalo File Numbers    FXXXXXXXXX / BXXXXXXXXX

To whom it may concern:

This letter is to request that the medical results for Medical File Number XXXX-RXXXXXX for CIC Client ID XXXX-XXXX (client name) be forwarded to CIC Buffalo Regional Processing Centre at your earliest convenience.

If you need to contact me regarding this request, I can be reached at (phone) or by e-mail at (email)

The Medical File Number was found on the FOSS notes.

[doctorkb]

Hey jamaican. Lol, too late! Come on, do you really expect me to shell out big money to send something across the border that they should have already gotten? In any case, I thought it would be a bit pointless to get it there in 2 business days or something, because I think it will still not be fully staffed this week anyway due to vacations around Thanksgiving/Black Friday/Cyber Monday. So I payed a buck (or is that a loonie?  ) 30 and sent it via CP. They'll be getting at least a fax from me too.....

We sent the documents request to them via snail mail as well.  It was received.

Don't count on the fax being received by the right person.  If you want to have it sent separately, have your MP's office do it.  If your MP is not being helpful, PM me and I'll get you the contact for our super-helpful MP's assistant.

[ddobro2]

Nice! I'll let you know if I'll have to take you up on that offer. Thanks 

If your MP is not being helpful, PM me and I'll get you the contact for our super-helpful MP's assistant.

[doctorkb]

I was gonna comiserate with you about your passport still not getting back but I didn't have time to before you posted the update - so congrats on finally having that COPR in hand, and good for you for requesting a refund for the service they didn't perform. I wonder if sending to Fort Erie would have made a difference or exactly what the problem on their end was.....

The visa was issued Nov 11.  Buffalo sent it Nov 15.  CanadaPost received it Nov 18 into their system.

I'm CERTAIN that if I had sent a USPS prepaid envelope, it would have gone into the USPS system on Nov 15, at the latest.

Having sent it to Buffalo instead of Ft Erie probably saved us 3-4 days in the scheme of things.

[basically your next door neighbors, lol]

Yup -- the same ones whose jobs / licenses depend on them telling the truth always.

When and if I get an email back from them saying I should have actually certified it, well then I can simply fax that

Actually, you can't fax that if it's needed to be certified.

Basically what certification does is take a photocopy (facsimile of original) and authenticate it as a "true copy" -- unmodified -- essentially creating another original.

As soon as you put the original into the fax machine, the received copy is not original / certified -- it is a facsimile.

I only say this to spare you the time if it's requested.  We all know that it would take a few days for them to look at the fax, then send you a letter asking for it to be sent by snail mail, blah, blah blah.

[doctorkb]

At this point it would be more for your own tracking purposes, because it's way too soon in the process to start bugging them.

Just to clarify, the "bugging" doesn't affect your processing time.  It's an office in Ottawa that provides the GCMS notes out of the centralised database.