On Sept. 21, New Delhi suspended visa services for Canadians “until further notice” after Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau leveled allegations that India carried out the extrajudicial assassination of Sikh separatist leader Hardeep Singh on Canadian soil, kicking up a diplomatic storm.
With visas for Canadians put on pause, families flying from Canada to India have had to reshuffle travel and even wedding plans. That has dearly cost local businesses that rely on heavy spending from non-resident Indians (NRIs) at this time of the year.
A truce seemed far off last week, after India expelled 41 Canadian diplomats, and Ottawa responded by halted visa and consular services in Mumbai, Chandigarh, and Bengaluru, leaving its Delhi high commission as the only viable option. Chaos ensued for students jittery about securing visas to study abroad in Canada.
All the while, Canada has been calling for India to take a calmer approach while probing the matter, and called India an “important” strategic partner still. Now, India has eased its stance. It will resume visa services for Canadian nationals across four categories—entry visa, business visa, medical visa, and conference visa—starting today (Oct. 26). Tourist and e-visas are not on the roster.
Quotable: Why India halted Canadian visa processing
“Some weeks ago, we stopped issuing visas in Canada because it was no longer safe for our diplomats to go to work to issue visas. So their safety and security was the primary reason we had to temporarily stop the issue of visas.”
—India’s external affairs minister S. Jaishankar at an event on Sunday (Oct. 22)
Canada’s visa processing backlog for Indians, by the digits
20,000: Number of visas for Indians that the Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) will actually be able to process by December, according to immigration minister Marc Miller. That’s down from the expected 38,000.
5: Number of IRCC members left in India that are now able to do the on-the-ground work that’s essential to process applications, making processing times slower
89%: India’s applications processed through the global network, suggesting the majority of applications from India are already processed outside the country
Country of interest: The US
The US is in the middle of the diplomatic sandwich between neighbor Canada—a NATO ally and Five Eyes intelligence sharing member—and India—a burgeoning strategic partner in the Indo-Pacific region to contend with China.
Washington has already voiced its concerns with New Delhi about Canada’s shrinking diplomatic presence in India. Its next steps depend on the evidence Ottawa brings per the investigation. But regardless of the findings, chances are that the Biden administration, which has even turned a blind eye to India snapping up Russian oil since the Ukraine war began last year, will not completely freeze out India. After all, even its condemnation of Riyadh, over the 2018 murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, has not gotten in the way of strengthening political and business relations with Saudi Arabia.
Plus, as Derek Grossman, a senior defense analyst at the think tank RAND and a former intelligence adviser at the Pentagon, wrote in an Oct. 25 Nikkei op-ed: “Many Indians are quick to point out that since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Washington has conducted extrajudicial killings on foreign soil by drone strike, depriving the US of any moral high ground in their view.”