Foreign students and tourists from India are being hard by the ongoing strike of Canadian visa officers say reports out of South Asia.

With India being home to Canada’s largest overseas visa office, the strike by a union of Canadian foreign service officers may affect the plans  of thousands of Indian students Chrystiane Roy, an Ottawa-based spokesperson for the Professional Association of Foreign Service Officers(PAFSO) said.

“In Delhi, all Foreign Service officers have at one time or other since June 6 withdrawn services,” according to the Hindustan Times.

The Canadian government maintains its facilities are open for business. 

Nancy Caron, a spokesperson for Citizenship and Immigration Canada, said, “CIC is closely monitoring the situation. All visa offices, including the one in Delhi, remain open and continue to provide service to clients. Every visa office maintains a core number of staff that has been deemed ‘essential’.”

While the extent of delays is unclear, PAFSO has claimed that these are fairly significant. Roy said visa issuance “dropped by nearly 25%” over the month of June and that the drop was “especially severe in largest centers such as Canadian missions in India, where services have been withdrawn, at 60 – 65 per cent.”

While not commenting on the figures provided by PAFSO, the CIC spokesperson stated the department was “providing training on an urgent basis so that more staff can process applications”. It is also moving more work to Canada and to offices at other centers with additional capacity. 

But Caron did have some advice for visa-seekers: “Anyone applying for a visa should submit their application as far in advance as possible.”

She also urged them to submit temporary visa applications online and to use Visa Application Centres or VACs. Canada has a network of 80 such VACs in 55 countries, including centers in New Delhi, Chandigarh, Jalandhar, Chennai, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Mumbai, Ahmedabad, and Kolkata.

PAFSO began the strike on April 2, protesting what it described as a wage gap compared to other federal officers. Work-to-rule followed a week later. Officers at missions around the world have withdrawn various services; in India, immigration services have been withdrawn in Delhi and Chandigarh.

The Professional Association of Foreign Service Officers (PAFSO) — which represents 1,350 non-executive Canadian diplomats — has been in a legal strike position since April. Among many other roles, these officers are responsible for processing Canadian visa applications, including those of students, from all over the world.

The Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada (AUCC) — advocating on behalf of students and the education sector as a whole —  is press the government to find a solution, so that universities will not be affected too severely by the breakdown in negotiations.

The foreign service officers are demanding what they call “equal pay for equal work.” They claim that they are inadequately paid when compared to workers with similar positions in other federal departments. The officers have been without a contract since mid-2011, and were in negotiations with the Treasury Board of Canada until January of 2013, when those negotiations ceased.

The Government of Canada has argued that foreign service officers get special “perks,” like dry-cleaning and international schools for their children, and are therefore compensated fairly. PAFSO counters this argument by explaining that these “perks” also apply to any other government officer who is working overseas, and therefore should not be taken into account when dealing with bargaining for salaries. PAFSO has acknowledged the difficulties the strike has caused for many people assuring that “once the government allows us back to work, the workload will be tackled with the same professionalism and dedication that has been demonstrated by those same officers on countless occasions.”  One of the main goals of the strike is to show the Canadian government the importance of foreign service officers by disturbing government proceedings. There is pressure on the Treasury Board to find a solution, as the backlog of workers grows by 5 per cent every week, and picketing workers cause international embarrassment.

CBC reported that the Tourism Industry Association of Canada is warning of huge losses because of the labour dispute. The group's president, David Goldstein, said in a statement last week that travellers are abandoning their plans to visit Canada because they were told about visa delays and that the visa system is "being held hostage."

"No matter what side of this labour dispute you find yourself on, there is clearly one loser — the Canadian tourism industry that stands to lose over a quarter of a billion dollars of business this year," he said.

Goldstein pegged the potential price tag at $280 million for 2013, but said the cost to Canada's reputation will be much higher, "as there are plenty of other more accessible countries happy to welcome their business."