Shreya Kamble hasn’t seen her family since she moved to Canada from India in late 2021. Now a permanent resident of Canada, the 28-year-old operations analyst sent her Indian passport to be stamped for a U.S. tourist visa so that she could fulfil a lifelong dream of visiting New York City.
But shortly after it was stamped and placed in the mail back to her, Canadian postal workers walked off the job, leaving her unable to go home and spend the holidays with her loved ones.
The strike, about to enter its third week, is causing more and more distress to those with passports caught in the mail and it shows no sign of ending, although Canada Post said Thursday morning it had received a new proposal from the Canadian Union of Postal Workers, which the union said included movement on company and union demands.
“It’s not just a piece of paper or a delayed parcel,” Kamble said. “I’m losing a chance to reconnect with the people who are my life, who matter the most to me.”
With her flight now gone without her on it, Kamble’s passport is stuck at a post office in downtown Toronto, which she was told she can’t enter due to the strike.
Since Nov. 8, about 185,000 passports that are ready to be mailed have been held by Service Canada, according to Employment and Social Development Canada (ESDC), the governmental department that operates Service Canada.
Those with passports held before they were mailed can request in-person pickup and should contact the federal passport program or visit a Service Canada location, ESDC said. It added that so far there “have been requests for approximately 6,500 passports to be transferred for pickup at a Service Canada office.”
But those whose passports were already in the mail when the strike hit, such as Kamble, are struggling to find a solution.
A spokesperson for the federal Minister of Citizens’ Services said there shouldn’t be many Canadian passports stuck in the postal system, since they began holding passports a week before the labour disruption. Those who have not received their passports “can reach out to Service Canada to resolve the situation.”
“We are proceeding on a case-by-case basis, especially due to the very low number of passports” that were mailed before Nov. 8 but have not yet arrived, the spokesperson said.
However, foreign nationals and those such as Kamble, who are trying to retrieve foreign passports, appear to be out of luck, with several passport holders telling the Star they have no option but to wait until the mail starts moving again.
(Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada referred questions relating to foreign passports to Global Affairs Canada, which did not immediately respond to a request for comment.)
Shiv Bhatt, 27, is a member of a WhatsApp text chain called the “Passport Pickup Group,” which connects over a dozen foreign nationals from China, India and the United Kingdom stranded in Canada who found each other on Reddit.
Though the group is limited in what they can do to help each other, he called it “a good place to talk” and provide mutual support.
Bhatt is a citizen of India who lives and works in Dallas, Texas, and travelled to Vancouver to have his work visa stamped by a foreign consulate outside of the U.S. After it was stamped and sent back in the mail to him, the postal strike took hold and he’s been unable to retrieve it, leaving him stranded in British Columbia, forced to pay for extended hotel stays amid Taylor Swift-prompted surge pricing in the city.
“It’s been emotionally and financially draining,” Bhatt said. “It’s been tremendously stressful.”
Still, there are some who managed to dodge a passport calamity.
Lindsay Malloy, an American-born university professor living in Whitby, officially became a Canadian citizen on Oct. 15, just a month before the mail stopped.
While she and her son had their passports delivered to them in early November before the strike started, her husband had to rush to pick his up at a Service Canada location in Scarborough the day before they were due to leave, saving their Thanksgiving travel plans to visit her parents in Michigan.
Malloy is one of the lucky ones, and she knows it.
“We barely got it,” Malloy said. “Hopefully most people can pick them up in person, if they’re able.”
With files from Josh Rubin
