every couple of days, jonno will be playing with the cat, and will turn to me and say, “we should save the airfare, and just put little zekey on a raft with ‘vancouver or bust’ on it.”

or we’ll be lying in bed drowsing, and he’ll say, “just think – when we get to vancouver, we’ll be able to go snowboarding every weekend, and get a dog to run around in the snow with.”

he’ll occasionally look at house listings in the area. when we were there in february, we were scouting out possible locations for where we might like to live.

we’ve been gathering what we need to apply to canada. birth certificates. money. transcripts. work documents. i postponed school. we were going to send the application in january.

we’ve planned on this for 5 years. apply to immigrate as a skilled worker (based on my work experience), giving us permanent residency straight away. i could apply to school when i got there. we could buy a house.

and then this evening, i got an email. pointing me to this news update put out yesterday:

Minister Kenney also announced another step in measures to improve the immigration program’s responsiveness to Canada’s labour market. Retroactive to February 27, 2008, the date specified by the Federal Budget, the Action Plan for Faster Immigration includes issuing instructions to visa officers reviewing new federal skilled worker applications to process those from candidates who:

* are in 38 high-demand occupations such as health, skilled trades, finance and resource extraction; or
* have an offer of arranged employment or have already been living legally in Canada for one year as a temporary foreign worker or international student.

The list of 38 occupations was developed after consultations with the provinces and territories, business, labour and other stakeholders. New federal skilled worker applications that do not meet the eligibility criteria outlined above will not be processed, and the application fee will be fully refunded. This, along with funds set aside in the 2008 Budget to improve the immigration system, will stop the backlog from growing and will start to draw it down.

my occupation is not on that list.

effectively, that means that our little plan of moving in 2 years time, has just been popped. the one escape route that i’ve been holding fast to in my heart, is no more.

my dream just died tonight. though to all outward appearances nothing has changed, my whole future has just been turned upside-down. the air has been sucked right out of the room, and there’s a hot ache in my chest that won’t go away.

jonno keep saying we’ll figure something out. i’m glad he has faith, since i don’t.

i wanted this so bad. i put all my hope in it. and right now, i just can’t see any light through the tears.

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