How will India’s visa office suspension affect Brampton travellers?

The suspension of Indian visa services at an application centre in Brampton has prompted uncertainty for many Canadian travellers hoping to visit India.

The news came Thursday as India’s visa processing centre in Canada halted services for Canadian citizens, with India saying it anticipates Ottawa will reduce its diplomatic presence in the country.

The move followed Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s address to Parliament last week, saying there are “credible allegations” of Indian involvement in the June killing of Sikh independence activist Hardeep Singh Nijjar. A prominent member of a movement to create an independent Sikh homeland known as Khalistan, Nijjar was involved in promoting the Khalistan referendum in Brampton last September.

Coun. Gurpartap Singh Toor said the prime minister’s statement wasn’t a surprise to the Sikh community, but rather “brings validation to the decades of Canadian voices that have always spoken about the presence of foreign interference and intelligence reporting by the government of India.”

Here’s what the visa centre closure could mean for India’s sizable diaspora community in Canada, which is now caught in the middle of rising diplomatic tensions between the two countries.

What services does the centre offer?

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With several offices in Canada including Brampton, Montreal and Toronto, BLS is the agency that processes visa requests for India, including for entry, tourist, student and employment visas.

Its services are divided into three main categories: passports, temporary visas and Overseas Citizenship of India (OCI) cards. Those eligible for OCI cards are persons of Indian origin who formerly held an Indian passport, along with their children and spouses.

It’s essentially a “lifetime visa for India,” the office states online. Cardholders are “granted multiple entry, multi-purpose, lifelong visa for visiting” the country.

But it cautions that OCI status is “not to be misconstrued as ‘dual citizenship,'” as India forbids its citizens from holding citizenship of a foreign country simultaneously.

Under normal circumstances, it usually takes about two to three months for the office to process OCI applications, while single entry visas would only take about a week to approve, said immigration consultant Pragati Sharma.

It is not clear how many Canadians hold OCI status, but Indian media reports suggest there were roughly six million cardholders worldwide as of 2020.

Are current OCI or visa holders affected by the office’s closure?

The suspension won’t affect Canadian citizens who already hold OCI cards, or those whose single entry visas have already been processed, said Sharma, who operates Westlink Immigration in Winnipeg.

However, any Canadian who planned on travelling to India but had not yet been granted an OCI or visa is out of luck for now, she said. That includes those who already applied but had not yet seen their submission processed.

“There are lots of calls I was getting this week because of the situation. People are worried how this is going to impact their applications, those who have already submitted those applications,” Sharma said.

“There is a rift between two countries and obviously they have taken some steps, so this is definitely going to impact Canadians.”

The Indian government has also released a list of what it calls wanted terrorists and “gangsters” including Canadian residents and the accused killer of Brampton rapper Sidhu Moose Wala.

With files from The Canadian Press and The Associated Press