Applicant from PhD program after 5 Nov, 2011 connect here to get status

[Aaron2012]

Hi Admin, Please add my information in the spreadsheet:

Username: mib26

Application reached CIO: 30-Apr-2012
CC/BD encashed: 03-May-2012
PER issued (CIO): 08-May-2012

Current eCAS status: In process

No. of persons in the application: 1

TA/RA Experience: Only

Nationality: China


After reviewing all the replies I found I might fall into the same situation like phdapplicant and Dani1982, since without "adaptability" I only have 66 pts (16 pts for IELTS, 2+ yrs RA and 9 months TA, no oversea working experience).

what a tragedy, but good luck to all you guys.

Thanks for sharing your timeline. Was your application forwarded to Ottawa?

[asbereth]

After reviewing all the replies I found I might fall into the same situation like phdapplicant and Dani1982, since without "adaptability" I only have 66 pts (16 pts for IELTS, 2+ yrs RA and 9 months TA, no oversea working experience).

Hi mib26, how many hours did you claim for work experience? Was it less than 3,900? If so, I'm assuming that, given your timeline, you probably never had to appeal the CIO's decision (implying that, by this point (May , they automatically awarded the 5 adaptability points without applicants having to appeal)?

[hamed_hamed]

A general question: How many hours of work (RA and TA) is counted as 1 year of full-time work experience in Canada?

[Brit_Immigrant]

A general question: How many hours of work (RA and TA) is counted as 1 year of full-time work experience in Canada?

1950 hours based on 37.5 hours /week.

[Brit_Immigrant]

Hi Guys, with all of the speculation over adaptability points, I have a question. I am now eligible for common-law (1 year living with my girlfriend) who is a Canadian citizen, but I wasn't eligible when I sent my application. Do you think I should send information regarding this to ensure that I receive full adaptability points? I also work using an off-campus work permit 20 hours per week since last September but does not equal 1950 hours in 12 months (It is only about 400 hours) and I didn't send information on this either. I just applied for approximately 4200 hours through RA/TA (i.e. over 2 years but less than 3). What are your thoughts? Should I send a number of updated documents to support this or do you think it is too late? If I get rejected I will just wait until I finish my PhD, hopefully jan/feb 2013 and apply with a job offer or through CEC, but it would be nice to get PR now (cheaper and I can start work full time while I am finishing up my PhD.

[TyrusX]

Hi Guys, with all of the speculation over adaptability points, I have a question. I am now eligible for common-law (1 year living with my girlfriend) who is a Canadian citizen, but I wasn't eligible when I sent my application. Do you think I should send information regarding this to ensure that I receive full adaptability points? I also work using an off-campus work permit 20 hours per week since last September but does not equal 1950 hours in 12 months (It is only about 400 hours) and I didn't send information on this either. I just applied for approximately 4200 hours through RA/TA (i.e. over 2 years but less than 3). What are your thoughts? Should I send a number of updated documents to support this or do you think it is too late? If I get rejected I will just wait until I finish my PhD, hopefully jan/feb 2013 and apply with a job offer or through CEC, but it would be nice to get PR now (cheaper and I can start work full time while I am finishing up my PhD.

Funny, I've been considering something like that myself. However I will probably not make it to an year before I get PR. I think you should add her ASAP, just add a cover letter stating why you had left it out to start with.

I've been also considering adding my RA/TA to my application, since I didn't include because I thought it could be detrimental, stupid me listening to Lawyers.

[mib26]

Hi mib26, how many hours did you claim for work experience? Was it less than 3,900? If so, I'm assuming that, given your timeline, you probably never had to appeal the CIO's decision (implying that, by this point (May , they automatically awarded the 5 adaptability points without applicants having to appeal)?

hi Aaron2012 and asbereth,

1. i don't know whether my application has been forwarded to Ottawa or anywhere else, is there a way to find it?

2. as to my working experience (RA/TA only), the weird thing is, when I sent my application to CIO Sydney, i did not indicate my entire working hours in my document, which in total should be RA:38hrs*52wks*2yrs+TA:242hrs=4194hrs.

instead, i only mentioned i have been a RA for 2 yrs and TA for 9 months.

at first i thought i would be rejected by CIO since i did calculate or show the working hours, however, they sent me the PER email anyway. is that just to be lucky or CIO deems PHD stream an independent catagory?

[Brit_Immigrant]

Funny, I've been considering something like that myself. However I will probably not make it to an year before I get PR. I think you should add her ASAP, just add a cover letter stating why you had left it out to start with.

I've been also considering adding my RA/TA to my application, since I didn't include because I thought it could be detrimental, stupid me listening to Lawyers.

I think I will, as I don't think it could be detrimental. I am assuming I have to send the documents to Ottawa now? Is there a way i can check this apart from CAIPS? I think it will take me a while to get all the documents together to prove common law, so I will plug away at it and wait to see if I hear off them before I can submit my case. I am pretty adapted, so will be furious if I don't get adaptability points, but as long as they find no issues with my RA/TA work experience I should still get 68 if they give me a zero for adaptability so I may be concerned over nothing.

[Aaron2012]

hi Aaron2012 and asbereth,

1. i don't know whether my application has been forwarded to Ottawa or anywhere else, is there a way to find it?

You can know it by calling the Call Centre. Please keep us posted then. Some could be in Ottawa; some could be in other offices like Buffalo or NY.

2. as to my working experience (RA/TA only), the weird thing is, when I sent my application to CIO Sydney, i did not indicate my entire working hours in my document, which in total should be RA:38hrs*52wks*2yrs+TA:242hrs=4194hrs.

instead, i only mentioned i have been a RA for 2 yrs and TA for 9 months.

at first i thought i would be rejected by CIO since i did calculate or show the working hours, however, they sent me the PER email anyway. is that just to be lucky or CIO deems PHD stream an independent catagory?

It seems that it's an individual decision made by a CIO vo. But now CIO has learned from us. That's all we know right now before any new information comes.

Normally, a reference letter of work experience clearly showing how many hours per week will greatly help VO to calculate how many years of work experience we have.

[asbereth]

I think I will, as I don't think it could be detrimental. I am assuming I have to send the documents to Ottawa now? Is there a way i can check this apart from CAIPS? I think it will take me a while to get all the documents together to prove common law, so I will plug away at it and wait to see if I hear off them before I can submit my case. I am pretty adapted, so will be furious if I don't get adaptability points, but as long as they find no issues with my RA/TA work experience I should still get 68 if they give me a zero for adaptability so I may be concerned over nothing.

Hi Brit_Immigrant, I see that you claimed 37.5 hours a week for RA/TA? Was this mentioned on the letter of reference? If there is one more thing that is not clear yet regarding claiming RA/TA as work experience, it's that we do not know yet whether or not they would count RA/TA experience as full-time work experience (due to the fact that we're also studying full-time). This was actually the reason why I only claimed up to 25 hours per week for TA/RA. Our supervisors most likely won't have any problems writing even 50 or 60 hours a week, it's just the matter how many hours we can claim per week for immigration purposes (and how many they would credit us).

It seems that it's an individual decision made by a CIO vo. But now CIO has learned from us. That's all we know right now before any new information comes.

Yeah, it does look like that the CIO officers now are of the opinion that the 5 adaptability points should be awarded for anyone that has studied full-time for two years in a post-secondary program, even if he hasn't completed the program yet. This seems to be, no doubt, because of the appeals that some of the applicants have done, since early on, they would just not award these points, and give NER to some of the early applicants if they relied on these 5 points to get above 67 points.

If they awarded these 5 points automatically now, then it could be good if eventually the VO also agrees. But if an applicant passes the CIO stage, only later to be rejected by the VO, then that's worse than getting the NER from CIO directly (since you won't get your money back). Hopefully this is not just some tactic by the Canadian immigration to milk more money from applicants.

1. i don't know whether my application has been forwarded to Ottawa or anywhere else, is there a way to find it?

Did you specify Buffalo as your VO? Apparently, everybody that applies to Buffalo will have their applications forwarded to Ottawa, though some people (i.e. 30pixie) chose other VO's. But Aaron2012 is right, if you're concerned about where they send it, you can call the CIC Call Center, and they will let you know where your application gets sent. Let us know.

[Brit_Immigrant]

Hi Brit_Immigrant, I see that you claimed 37.5 hours a week for RA/TA? Was this mentioned on the letter of reference? If there is one more thing that is not clear yet regarding claiming RA/TA as work experience, it's that we do not know yet whether or not they would count RA/TA experience as full-time work experience (due to the fact that we're also studying full-time). This was actually the reason why I only claimed up to 25 hours per week for TA/RA. Our supervisors most likely won't have any problems writing even 50 or 60 hours a week, it's just the matter how many hours we can claim per week for immigration purposes (and how many they would credit us).

Yeah, it does look like that the CIO officers now are of the opinion that the 5 adaptability points should be awarded for anyone that has studied full-time for two years in a post-secondary program, even if he hasn't completed the program yet. This seems to be, no doubt, because of the appeals that some of the applicants have done, since early on, they would just not award these points, and give NER to some of the early applicants if they relied on these 5 points to get above 67 points.

If they awarded these 5 points automatically now, then it could be good if eventually the VO also agrees. But if an applicant passes the CIO stage, only later to be rejected by the VO, then that's worse than getting the NER from CIO directly (since you won't get your money back). Hopefully this is not just some tactic by the Canadian immigration to milk more money from applicants.

Did you specify Buffalo as your VO? Apparently, everybody that applies to Buffalo will have their applications forwarded to Ottawa, though some people (i.e. 30pixie) chose other VO's. But Aaron2012 is right, if you're concerned about where they send it, you can call the CIC Call Center, and they will let you know where your application gets sent. Let us know.

My supervisor wrote a letter stating my hours and payment pretty clearly, I was running a few courses in which I was practically doing 37.5 hours a work TA'ing for two semesters. Plus we do billable consulting work so they should accredit me with the full hours experience as I was paid through Industry sponsored funds.

[Luigiovemma]

I think I will, as I don't think it could be detrimental. I am assuming I have to send the documents to Ottawa now? Is there a way i can check this apart from CAIPS? I think it will take me a while to get all the documents together to prove common law, so I will plug away at it and wait to see if I hear off them before I can submit my case. I am pretty adapted, so will be furious if I don't get adaptability points, but as long as they find no issues with my RA/TA work experience I should still get 68 if they give me a zero for adaptability so I may be concerned over nothing.

Hope you don't have to get to the point. Preparing documents for common-law is such a pain...Unless you've been preparing all along, otherwise it takes a lot of time and effort...Half of my application materials was for the common-law relationship...

[Brit_Immigrant]

Hope you don't have to get to the point. Preparing documents for common-law is such a pain...Unless you've been preparing all along, otherwise it takes a lot of time and effort...Half of my application materials was for the common-law relationship...

That was my fear. I may just start collecting the information in case I have to re-apply using it. If I get it all together before I hear from Ottawa I will forward it with a covering letter.

[mib26]

Did you specify Buffalo as your VO? Apparently, everybody that applies to Buffalo will have their applications forwarded to Ottawa, though some people (i.e. 30pixie) chose other VO's. But Aaron2012 is right, if you're concerned about where they send it, you can call the CIC Call Center, and they will let you know where your application gets sent. Let us know.

thanks for your answers, Aaron2012 and asbereth, the vo i specified was Buffalo, but i shall call the them later to figure out where is my application now.

will keep you informed.

[mib26]

hi Aaron2012 and asbereth,

1. i don't know whether my application has been forwarded to Ottawa or anywhere else, is there a way to find it?

2. as to my working experience (RA/TA only), the weird thing is, when I sent my application to CIO Sydney, i did not indicate my entire working hours in my document, which in total should be RA:38hrs*52wks*2yrs+TA:242hrs=4194hrs.

instead, i only mentioned i have been a RA for 2 yrs and TA for 9 months.

at first i thought i would be rejected by CIO since i did calculate or show the working hours, however, they sent me the PER email anyway. is that just to be lucky or CIO deems PHD stream an independent catagory?

sorry, i was supposed to say "at first i thought i would be rejected by CIO since i did not calculate or show the working hours, however, they sent me the PER email anyway. is that just to be lucky or CIO deems PHD stream an independent catagory?"