Dr. Michael Antil is one step closer to becoming a Canadian. <\/p>\n
The doctor at Toronto\u2019s Albany Medical Clinic was invited by Canada\u2019s immigration department to apply for permanent residency here, giving the North Carolina-native a renewed chance to officially call the city home.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere was an email from my lawyer, and I looked at it and looked at it and, right away, I was like, \u2018Oh my gosh. What is this? This is great,\u2019\u201d Antil said in an interview on Monday, adding he was incredulous at first to see the email given it was a Thursday. <\/p>\n
He received an email from his immigration lawyer on Feb. 19, just five days after CTV News Toronto reported on the physician\u2019s odyssey-like battle in his pursuit to be Canadian, a saga rife with delays, points systems and misfiled paperwork. <\/p>\n
Antil has two years left on his work permit. With more than 2,100 patients rostered to him, Antil wants to trade in his status as foreign temporary worker to permanent Canadian physician. <\/p>\n
\u201cI was super excited. Unfortunately, I didn\u2019t know anybody else in my subway car,\u201d Antil said, recounting when he read the email. <\/p>\n
Antil received his invitation to apply for permanent residency through Canada\u2019s express entry stream, which recently opened the doors for international medical doctors so the critical labour gaps in the nation\u2019s health-care system could be addressed. <\/p>\n
Ilene Solomon, one of the lawyers working on Antil\u2019s file, said Antil is one of 391 doctors who were invited to apply in this round. Antil accrued 435 points for his immigration score, though the cutoff was 169\u2014a considerably low bar, Solomon notes. <\/p>\n
\u201cI did the calculations, and, really, all you needed was that one year of required Canadian physician work experience in the last three years, and you needed to speak English or French at required levels for express entry,\u201d Solomon told CTV News Toronto in an interview Tuesday.<\/p>\n
The number of invitations was also markedly low, as an average round typically yields 4,000 invites, Solomon adds.<\/p>\n
\u201cObviously, 391 is a low number,\u201d Solomon said. \u201cBut, when you\u2019re considering these are all physicians that have just one year of work experience, one year of full-time work experience in Canada or more, it\u2019s actually a pretty good number.\u201d<\/p>\n
While Antil is no doubt excited about his invitation, the 50-year-old pointed to how he has been through this ordeal\u2014or \u201cbureaucratic snafu,\u201d as he calls it\u2014already a couple of times in the last three years.<\/p>\n
He compared the feeling to the high emotions felt on one\u2019s wedding day. <\/p>\n
\u201cYou want it to be perfect, but something always goes wrong, or two or three things always go wrong on your wedding day,\u201d Antil said. \u201cBut, as long as you end the day married, then it was a success.\u201d<\/p>\n
Solomon says they have 60 days from the time they received their invitation to submit Antil\u2019s application for permanent residency. After, Solomon says the Canadian immigration department has up to seven months to process the applicants in Antil\u2019s class. <\/p>\n
The federal government\u2019s move to invite these physicians shows they are interested in bringing in out-of-country doctors to fill the gaps in the country\u2019s health-care system as it provides a viable path to permanent residency, Solomon says, but she says the path forward is still not fully paved. <\/p>\n
\u201cThese rounds of invitations, there\u2019s no schedule for that,\u201d Solomon said. \u201cWe\u2019ve made such great strides since December in this area, but I think this category needs to continue to be used and hopefully, in a predictable manner.\u201d<\/p>\n
When Antil does receive his permanent residence status, he says the whole family, and everyone who has supported and helped them along the way, will be invited to celebrate. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe will open that bottle of champagne that we were given way back in 2023, or probably should get a new one and use it.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dr. Michael Antil is one step closer to becoming a Canadian. The doctor at Toronto\u2019s Albany Medical Clinic…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":498510,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194291],"tags":[712,49,48,3302],"class_list":["post-498509","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-toronto","tag-apple-news","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-toronto"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/498509","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=498509"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/498509\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/498510"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=498509"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=498509"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=498509"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}