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Ever since he lost his right to work in sa¹ú¼Ê´«Ã½, Rajesh Kumar has been checking the news and making inquiries through every channel he can think of as to why a document for his work visa has been held up by the federal government.

Kumar, 31, who had been working as an assistant manager at the Beacon Drive In diner in James Bay, has been the sole provider for his mother and sister in India since his father died in 2021.

But he hasn’t been able to work since Oct. 9, the day his two-year temporary foreign worker visa expired. He applied in May for a two-year visa renewal but has yet to get an answer.

Kumar now has only until Jan. 10 — 90 days from the visa expiry — before he is forced to leave the country if he can’t get another permit.

He believes his application is being held up by a lack of communication between Service sa¹ú¼Ê´«Ã½, which approves the labour market impact assessment employers must submit for permits to be issued, and Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship sa¹ú¼Ê´«Ã½.

Beacon Drive In general manager Janet Reynolds said she doesn’t understand why Kumar’s visa application has run into so many delays.

Service sa¹ú¼Ê´«Ã½ told Reynolds that it’s still processing applications from March, two months before Kumar’s was submitted.

“We’re frustrated because we can’t get proper answers,” Reynolds said. “No one will give us answers.”

An urgent processing request for Kumar’s application was denied by Service sa¹ú¼Ê´«Ã½ on Thursday.

Kumar, who has a master’s degree in hospitality from Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University and has worked in restaurant leadership positions in Dubai, started working at Beacon Drive In as an assistant manager in the summer of 2022, when he arrived from Dubai.

Kumar, who makes $21 an hour and lives near Uptown with three roommates, called sa¹ú¼Ê´«Ã½ a beautiful, multicultural and booming country with lots of opportunities.

But with the visa uncertainty, he has postponed his marriage ceremony in Punjab, India, that was supposed to happen in October because he wasn’t sure if he was going to be allowed back into the country.

He said the stress of his situation has been keeping him up at night.

After Kumar reached out to local MLAs and MPs for assistance, a constituency assistant with Esquimalt-Saanich-Sooke MP Randall Garrison told Reynolds and Kumar that Service sa¹ú¼Ê´«Ã½ has a seven-month temporary foreign worker visa backlog.

The agency currently receives 1,000 foreign worker visa-related applications a day, but can only process 1,000 files each week, the email said.

“The Service sa¹ú¼Ê´«Ã½ team is working as quickly as possible to process these applications, and they’re aware that the current service standards are not meeting the needs,” the assistant said in an email seen by the sa¹ú¼Ê´«Ã½.

In a statement to the sa¹ú¼Ê´«Ã½, Employment and Social Development sa¹ú¼Ê´«Ã½ spokesperson Mila Roy said applications are processed in the order in which they are received, though the time needed to finish an application varies based on how complete the application is, whether additional follow-ups are required, or if the application is from a “high-risk” employer.

Service sa¹ú¼Ê´«Ã½ also processed more labour market impact assessment applications than it received in November and is steadily increasing its processing rate, she said.

Kumar said he doesn’t understand why one of his peers — another temporary foreign worker with a similar position who is also working in Victoria’s restaurant sector — was able to get his visa renewal approved in just 12 days when he applied in August.

Reynolds said Beacon Drive In is at risk of losing a fifth of its current employees due to bureaucratic hold-ups. Two of her other employees, tired of the uncertainty and wary of further visa changes, have already returned or have made plans to go back to Indonesia once their work permits expire, she said.

Another two employees also have visas that are at risk, she said.

“We train them, we pay for all these people to get here and now we’re losing them like crazy,” she said. “How can you be playing Russian roulette and head games with these poor people?”

Reynolds, who has been with the diner for 22 years, had hoped that Kumar would eventually take over her position and run the restaurant into its 100th year of operations in 2058.

Ian Tostenson, president of the sa¹ú¼Ê´«Ã½ Restaurant and Food Services Association, said ­temporary foreign workers have been critical to the restaurant sector, where there is a chronic shortage of cooks and chefs. He said the sector, which has about 180,000 workers, likely needs another 20,000 to meet demand.

“We did a study that for every three people that retire in sa¹ú¼Ê´«Ã½, we only have two domestic workers to replace [the ­retirees],” he said.

Of the 1,225 employer applications for temporary foreign worker jobs approved on Vancouver Island by the Canadian government from January to March, the most common non-agricultural job was for a cook position at 223 jobs, followed by kitchen support staff at 165 and “food service supervisors” at 153, according to data released by the federal government. Agricultural workers accounted for 157 temporary foreign worker jobs on the Island.

Reynolds said when she recently tried to fill a cook position, only three out of seven people showed up for the interview. One person who did show up wanted to dictate the hours and salary for her job, she said.

“You’re telling me that there’s all these Canadians that are out of work. Well pardon me, but that’s [expletive],” she said.

The diner is currently advertising two full-time cook positions for $20 an hour plus benefits.

Tostenson said hiring an employee in sa¹ú¼Ê´«Ã½ under the temporary worker program’s skilled worker track takes eight to 10 months and is more costly than a domestic hire, so most employers would prefer to hire Canadians.

“But there’s no Canadians if you look at it from the point of view of enrolment in cooking schools,” said Tostenson, adding changes to federal regulations that came into effect on Nov. 8 requiring employers to pay foreign workers 20 per cent above the median wage for the field have all but killed the program for the restaurant sector.

“In our case, we’d be forced into paying $36 an hour, which is unheard of,” he said.

As Kumar’s application was submitted before Nov. 8, his pay does not need to meet the new regulations.

University of Victoria sociology assistant professor Anelyse Weiler said sa¹ú¼Ê´«Ã½ has seen massive growth in the number of temporary residents in recent years, partly due to relaxed rules about who was allowed to work in the country because of worker shortages in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic.

At the same time, the country’s challenges in housing, affordability, health care and the cost of living have also grown, she said. Now, for the first time in 25 years, the majority of Canadians believe too many immigrants are coming into the country, Weiler said.

“When times get tough, people often look for someone to blame.”

Rapid changes to immigration policy introduced by the federal Liberals this year have left temporary residents in sa¹ú¼Ê´«Ã½ in a highly precarious situation, she said.

“We’re now looking at a ­situation where the federal ­government has changed its tune and now we have an estimate of over two million who are looking at their [work] permits expiring.”

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