About to begin the process, and have questions about the supporting documents...

[moonside]

Hi!

I am so relieved to find this forum, I so desperately need to just talk to people who are going through this stuff. Anyway, I'm 23, Canadian, and a fulltime Business student. I actually found this forum googling if I'd even be an eligible sponsor because I currently live off my student loans & am not otherwise employed. (and apparently I can! yay!) My fiance is 21 & American. We've been together for 2 years, been engaged for 1. We're hoping to get married at the start of January and so our aim is to have the paperwork in by then! I have looked over the paperwork and started to fill it out I do have some questions:

1) I've perused the actual website, but it's just confusing me! Does the medical exam have to be submitted WITH the sponsorship/residency paperwork? I read somewhere that it does, but I can't find the darn form they're specifying that you need, and I swear I read somewhere else that they'll send you the medical examination paperwork after your application is received. So I am totally confused about that. My fiance lives in Vermont, and there's nowhere even remotely nearby where he can get an exam done, so he's planning on coming here to New Brunswick to get it done, will that be okay? Does anyone know off the top of their head how much the exam costs to get done?

2) The criminal record check. I had assumed that it was just a regular police record check, but then I'm seeing posts about an FBI check? Does he have to submit a form to the FBI? If so, I'm guessing we should get on that, since we want to submit the appers in 2 months.

3) Crossing the border, what are your personal experiences with that? Our plan is to get married in Vermont & mail the paperwork off, and then he's going to drive me back home in Canada, stay for a few days, and then head back to VT. My fiance is the one with a vehicle, as I'm a poor student, and he generally travels to Canada once or twice a month, usually to pick me up and bring me back to the US to stay for a while when I'm on breaks from school. I'm assuming that as long as we're honest and straightforward, they won't give us too much trouble, but some reassurement would be great!

4) Acceptable proof of our relationship... my fiance and I met in an online game (World of Warcraft) and that's our main form of communication. I'm wondering if printed off screenshots of our little characters interacting together would be too weird for them, or not solid proof of our relationship. I also wanted to get people we play the game with, but haven't met in person, to write statements for us, but again, I dont' want to make things look too weird. Thoughts on if we should just stick with photos/phone records/Facebook posts?

Sorry for the stupid questions! We're both a bit overwhelmed and scared by the process, and certainly feel incredibly young and naive right now, haha! Any suggestions and feedback would be much appreciated <3

[Belinasha]

Hi Moonside!

I read your post and my husband and I sound very similar to you and your fiance. I was also worried about applying due to being a student (last year) and my income was purely from student loans last year, but from what I've read, this shouldn't be an issue due to the fact that spouses are income exempt.

The medical exam needs to be done before you apply, as well as his FBI certificate. I would do the FBI as soon as possible because they seem very very slow at getting it back. We just sent ours last week and it will probably be February before we get it back. We did the medical here in Ottawa. There is a place on the CIC website that you can find a DMP (designated medical practitioner) listed near you. I'm sure there are some in NB, but if he's in Vermont and close to Montreal, that's always a possibility too.

I flew down to Chicago (were we physically dated at least once a month) and we drove back to Ottawa when he "moved" here to "visit". The border guard didn't bother scanning his Passport card and just asked why he had so much stuff in the car with him if he was only visiting for 1 month (that's what we told him). He just asked about my then fiance's job in the States and pretty much said he didn't believe my hubby and said that my hubby could only stay for as long as he said he could (which was the 1 month). He didn't give my hubby a visitor's record to stipulate the 1 month so yay, he could stay the whole 6 months. We're gonna apply for an extension in March and hopefully we'll be well on our way to getting his PR by then and he'll get it while on implied status.

We had a good giggle at your World of Warcraft comments and how you met on there. My hubby and I did as well. He's from Iowa and I flew back and forth to Chicago so we could date, but otherwise our relationship was mostly in-game. We were hoping we could get ventrillo logs of us being on vent 90 percent of the time (cheaper than phoning back and forth), but vent doesn't have that option. We had to switch to phoning each other once we started looking into the immigration stuff and needed phone records ect. We're worried about proof of relationship too. I don't think that they would accept screenshots of our characters in-game as proof because the toons could be anybody. As well as you guys, all our friends are in-game and they've all said they'd email us letters of acknowledgment of our relationship. Our in-game friends are our family and most of them are my hubby's co-workers from when he lived in Iowa, but most of the others are guildies and people who have known us for years in-game. I'm just worried that they won't take this into consideration. We spend more time with these people than most people do with real life in-person friends. I'm sure that they get tons of spouse applications from people who have met online. At least our guys are close enough to see on a regular basis (mine has moved..err "visiting" here) so there's lots of opportunities to take tons of pictures and do activities with them to show further proof. Some people have fiance's on the other side of the world and can't have constant contact and they seem to have no troubles proving their relationships. We got a joint bank account and proof that we've sent money back and forth when needed to show support, we have a joint credit card, we've got envelopes from mail with his name and our address on them..stuff like that...tons of pics of all the trips we've been on and receipts from hotels/plane tickets. I don't think you have too much to worry about. It's overwhelming, but you've come to the right forums for some peace of mind. I hope this helps.

[Isometry]

1. You need to do the exam before you submit things. The cost varies depending on your DMP; Mine was $400 but I've seen people here saying theirs was as low as $100. When I called to schedule an appointment, the office manager told me exactly what it would cost and what I needed to bring over the phone. From my understanding you can use any DMP you want, just keep in mind that if any followup work is required you'll need to get it done at the same one.

2. The FBI check has to be from the FBI. They take a while to get it done, but that form's not a big deal, so he should submit it now-ish.
http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/background-checks
It's my understanding that you should use the FBI directly, not a channeler, because a channeler can't authenticate the results.

3. My experience has been that being honest/straightforward is best. He shouldn't volunteer information, but just honestly answer whatever they ask. Since he'll be going back home to VT after a few days, he can bring things that show ties there, such as a copy of his lease. They probably won't ask for anything like that but it's always best to be prepared.

4. I also met my husband on WoW and had a couple of my guildies write letters for us. Apparently meeting in a video game isn't too uncommon, check out this post: http://www.canadavisa.com/canada-immigration-discussion-board/how-did-you-meet-t67051.0.html

I did not include WoW screenshots, though I was tempted. I couldn't think of a good way to write captions...
"He's the blue goat chick with pigtails and a big axe. I'm the blue goat chick with the green lasers coming out of my hands. Ignore the other two dozen people, they're just helping us kill that giant spider."

[Belinasha]

"He's the blue goat chick with pigtails and a big axe. I'm the blue goat chick with the green lasers coming out of my hands. Ignore the other two dozen people, they're just helping us kill that giant spider."

This is excellent. The hubby and I had a huge laugh over this! After spending hours reading these forums..I needed a good laugh. I thank you.