Buffalo immigration backlog leaves new Canadians in limbo

OTTAWA — The closure of a visa office in upstate New York last spring has meant extra long delays for thousands of increasingly cash-strapped would-be permanent residents and Canada could risk losing the very immigrants it wants most as a result.International students and foreign workers — young, educated newcomers with so-called Canadian experience, the kind of people Canada’s revamped immigration system is increasingly keen to court — comprise the vast majority of the nearly 10,000 files that were transferred to Ottawa from Buffalo, N.Y.