(MONTREAL, QUEBEC, CANADA) — Mohamad Ataya has waited six years for permanent residency in Canada, a delay that has left the Montreal father of two stuck in federal security screening and unable to make plans beyond his current temporary status.

Ataya, a Lebanese citizen married to Canadian citizen Sarah Abou-Nassif, filed a spousal sponsorship application in 2020. He received his Certificat de sélection du Québec in April 2021, completing the provincial stage, but the application has remained with Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada since then.

As of July 9, 2026, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada told the family that security screening was still pending. Ataya’s work permit expires in late 2027, leaving his future in Canada unresolved even after years in the system.

The case has become one of the clearest examples of the split between provincial and federal processing in Quebec. The Quebec Ministry of Immigration approved its part of the file more than five years ago, but final permanent residence still depends on federal screening.

That bottleneck extends well beyond one family. The Quebec Ministry of Immigration reported in May 2026 that 42,000 people were in Quebec’s family reunification backlog for permanent residency, a figure that has intensified criticism from immigration lawyers and families waiting for decisions.

Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada updated its processing times on July 7, 2026. For spousal sponsorship within Quebec, the posted wait reached 32 months, well above the 12-month standard applied elsewhere in Canada.

Montreal immigration lawyer Mohamed-Amine Semrouni said the Quebec association of immigration lawyers filed a request with the Federal Court in July 2026 seeking to force Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada to address the delays. He argued that “other provinces have the capacity to do security screenings in a reasonable amount of time.”

Quebec has also set a cap that shapes the wider environment around family cases. The province fixed a limit of 15,700 applications until June 2028, adding another layer of pressure to an already slow process for family reunification applicants.

Ataya’s case carries a human cost that standard processing charts do not capture. He has missed family milestones, including the births of his two children, who are now under age three, because travel restrictions and visa renewals left him unable to move freely while the file remained pending.

Abou-Nassif has borne much of the family burden during the wait, in what the case description calls solo parenting by the Canadian spouse. The long delay has also fed financial strain, since applicants in limbo often struggle to secure stable employment and may remain shut out of provincial benefits while they wait for a final decision.

The emotional strain has mounted alongside the paperwork. Families in prolonged immigration limbo described the uncertainty as corrosive, with lives organized around permit expiries and delayed decisions rather than long-term plans.

Although Ataya’s application is in Canada, the same pattern of backlog and security screening appears in the United States. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services said in a July 1, 2026 statement that, “USCIS is currently managing a record backlog of over 11 million pending cases. While we have increased staffing at the California and Texas Service Centers by 12%, we acknowledge that for many families, the wait for permanent residency continues to exceed several years.”

U.S. data released through immigration and citizenship reports showed a backlog of 500,000+ pending Form I-90 green card renewals as of July 2026. That figure sits within a broader queue affecting family-based and other permanent residency cases.

The Department of Homeland Security sharpened that message in guidance issued on May 21, 2026 on adjustment of status. The memo described permanent residency as a “discretionary measure, not an expected benefit.”

A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson said on May 29, 2026, “This policy is a reminder to officers of their discretionary authority. to target foreign nationals who have overstayed their visas and ensure the integrity of the residency process.” The administration also said during a budget hearing in June 2026 that security screening remains a primary cause of indefinite holds on residency applications, particularly for nationals from designated high-security regions.

That explanation echoes the problem at the center of Ataya’s file. Security screening has been cited as the main reason for multi-year delays affecting Lebanese and other Middle Eastern nationals, turning family sponsorship cases into open-ended waits even after provincial approval.

Quebec families now face a system in which one level of government can clear an application while another continues to hold it for years. In practice, that leaves spouses and children in Canada with no reliable timeline for reunification, no way to predict whether work authorization will bridge the gap, and no certainty that a file already years old will move any faster than the posted average.

Ataya’s work permit still runs until late 2027, but that date functions less as reassurance than as another deadline. Without a permanent residency decision before then, the family remains tied to renewals, screening delays and a process that has already stretched from marriage in 2020 to the summer of 2026.

Government agencies continue to publish updates that track the gap between applications filed and decisions issued. Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada posts current timelines through its case processing pages, while the Quebec Ministry of Immigration provides provincial information on immigration programs and intake limits. For families like Ataya’s, those updates chart a wait that has already consumed six years and still has no end date.