Work permit backlog puts international students in tough spot

Quinte Immigration Services is a fairly small operation off of Airport Parkway in Belleville, but they deal with hundreds of clients in the post-graduation months of May and June. Photo by Max Reid, QNet News

By Max Reid

BELLEVILLE – Many students at Loyalist College are getting back to work for the summer following their school year, but the same is not true for many of recently graduated international students whose employment is currently stuck in logistical limbo.

At the moment, Quinte Immigration Services, a non-profit organization that provides information and referrals to new Canadians, is struggling to keep up with the rising influx of international students hoping to be able to submit a post-graduation work permit.

The organization is currently facing a two-week backlog of people trying to submit applications, according to the executive director of Quinte Immigration Services Orlando Ferro.

The issue arises because once students receive a letter of program completion from the college, they are forced to stop working until they can submit an application for the permit.

Quinte Immigration settlement worker John Mark Robertson, 52, says that the organization simply lacks the resources to be able to deal with such a quantity of students.

John Mark Robertson, 52, says Quinte Immigration Services has had to take on extra part-time help in the office to manage the backlog issue. Photo by Max Reid, QNet News

Robertson works alongside only one other settlement worker and suggests that much of the work that needs to be done is simple and repetitive, but he says that “We can’t afford to hire anybody else,” and the two settlement workers are having a hard time keeping up.

“My co-worker and I, today, for example, spent the entire morning with about four or five different people doing basically the same thing,” says Robertson.

According to Robertson, one of the biggest challenges they face is just getting on the same page as their client about what is required of them and how the application process works, but he believes the college could be doing more to prepare students for this stressful post-graduation period.

Robertson suggests that if the college put a stronger emphasis on educating international students earlier in the year on the work permit process, in a large-scale seminar format, the work done on the part of Quinte Immigration would go much smoother and wouldn’t lead to the considerable anxiety he said that many of his clients are feeling about this uncertainty to their stay in Canada.

Officials in Loyalist’s international department were not available for comment.