So when my work permit was declined on the basis of us not having submitted a permanent resident application, Py's job ordered up a lawyer to help. About 3 weeks ago she sent an inquiry to them which probably went something like this:
Lawyer: these folks sent in a permanent resident application and sent you proof of same. Could you explain why that was used as a basis for denial? I'm sure this is an error that is easily remedied.
And this probably is what happened over at the office, which is in a different part of the country than the immigration/permanent resident office and probably never called them or heard from them:
Supervisor to clerk: Hey, can you check this application that you denied on March 21? There's a lawyer saying we made a mistake and I want to be sure of it before I send her any materials.
Clerk: Oh, crap! We forgot to issue them a refund! (see below for another possibility)
Supervisor: No worries, just process the refund and send them a back dated letter - they'll think the original got lost in their spam or something.
Clerk (thinking): O.K., back date the letter, that means it has to be before the 21st, guess I'll make it - not March 7, they'll be suspicious of that. I'll make it March 8!
So we get a letter saying that a refund has been requested and will be sent to the person who paid the application fee.
Py did not receive anything, nor did I, at any time in the past couple of months.
I misread the letter and suffered an hour of stress until Py looked at the date.
So now they have compounded the error. I am hoping that the other possible reason for back dating the letter is the actual truth: that they called over to the other office, where the clerk said, "Oh, yeah, we opened it but we haven't processed it yet. It has a date stamp of March 9th"
Clerk to supervisor: Oh crap, we should have checked!
Supervisor: No worries. Just find some correspondence we could have sent them and date it March 8th. That way we can be telling the truth when we said there was no application.
Clerk: Hm, what can I send them - oh, I know! The refund letter - they will think that they heard from us and asked for a refund!
If the immigration office told the work permit office that the application was in queue for the "we are processing your application" letter, they may also be hoping that we will get it and drop the whole thing, since one of the reasons for getting the work permit is to get the national health insurance. They don't realize I want both. If they process a refund, we will have to start from square one and that would give immigration 4 months to send us the "we are processing your application" letter.
