Promise of visa letter

In the turmoil before Saigon’s fall, the visa office at our Commission in Hong Kong couldn’t reach sponsored Vietnamese refugees to process their applications. So, over 3500 letters like this one were sent to known addresses in the country up until April, 1979. The family actually named in this example were finally able to present themselves to the Canadian visa office in Saigon for processing in July, 1989.

Example of letter

Bulletin 111 December 2024

We end 2024 with Bulletin 111 which reports on CIHS activities this year:

The October 2024 CIHS Annual General Meeting, which highlighted Canada’s Operation Parasol, the evacuation of Kosovars to Canada;
CIHS participation in “Memory, Politics and Precedent”, a November 2024 conference in Toronto that commemorated the Kosovar evacuation;
A brief mention of a November book launch event held in Ottawa and attended by CIHS members;
It announces this year’s recipient of the CIHS Molloy Bursary; and
The 2024 CIHS website usage report.

We also share two accounts of Canada’s immigration history:

Two articles from the 1929 Windsor Star newspaper about staffing at the new Ambassador Bridge; and
A report on a junior visa officer’s area trip from Beirut in 1972 to conduct interviews in many countries in and adjacent to Africa.

Finally, we take note of the recent passing of former immigration foreign service program manager Jean-François Hubert-Rouleau.

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