Visa backlogs force Canadians to cancel trips to India

It's 8:30 a.m. on a chilly Friday morning in Surrey, B.C., and a queue of people snakes around a strip mall in the Metro Vancouver suburb.

They're not here for the mall's sweet shop or the Filipino fusion restaurant. Most of them have been waiting hours for an Indian visa at the BLS International Visa Application Centre.

Arminder Bajwa is one of hundreds of Indian visa applicants who say backlogs in the system are leaving people like him in limbo as visa applications have spiked amid a drop in global travel restrictions. He's been here since 5:30 a.m. when temperatures were near zero.

Indian visa applicants are calling for the return of an electronic visa program that allowed online applications and was in place in Canada before the pandemic, as well as more staffing to address reported processing delays across the country.

"I've spent like $8,000 on tickets," Bajwa says from the queue, surrounded by dozens of others trying to keep warm. "For my sister's marriage … that's my sister, and I have to be there because that's like a tradition.

"That situation, inflation and everything … $8,000," he repeats.

But Bajwa's passport has been with authorities inside the BLS office for over 17 days, and he's getting desperate. 

Another person in line said they had been waiting over two months — despite the Indian consulate's stated timeline of 30 days for a visa.

Before the pandemic, applicants like Bajwa had access to an electronic visa application that was entirely virtual, a program that was brought to a halt amid travel shutdowns.

And though the program has been restored to over 156 countries, it hasn't been restored yet to Canada, despite India's status as the largest source of new Asian immigrants to Canada since 2016.

The Indian high commissioner-designate, Sanjay Kumar Verma, said that visa applications have spiked to dramatic levels but denied widespread delays.

But a voicemail from BLS International, to which the Indian High Commission has outsourced its visa applications, says that "processing times have been increased."

The company did not return a request for comment. But an acknowledgement of delays is little consolation for Bajwa and others in his situation.

"The population in Surrey, Metro Vancouver, is ballooning. It's, like, increasing day by day," he said. "They need more offices. They need more people."