Landed in Toronto Successfully!

Hi Everyone,

With the grace of Almighty, we have landed in Toronto successfully and everything during the landing procedure went quite smoothly. Following is my experience:

My wife, my son and myself arrived at Toronto Airport via Emirates in the late afternoon on Wednesday. After disembarking the huge A380 aircraft, we queued up at the immigration counters. Many flights had landed at that time I guess and there were at least a couple of 100 people in front of us in the queue. But there were at least 15 counters serving that queue. This was the first country that I visited where there was only one queue for everyone (Canadian, Non-Canadian, PR etc.).

We waited for a good 30 mins before our turn. The Immigration Officer at the counter took our passports, landing papers and the arrival declaration card that I had filled (one card for 4 family members with same address) while in the aircraft. She asked how much money we were carrying and whether we had any goods to follow later?. She noted that information on the arrival declaration card and after marking the card with red and pink colored pens and then returning all the documents to us, she directed us to go to another immigration room. There was another queue there of people (at least 30 to 40 people) which had some immigration matters to sort out including new immigrants. After standing in that queue for around 15 mins, an officer came around asking for people who have landing papers to leave this queue and go to a different queue at the back of the counters. This was a relatively short queue with 4 to 5 people only in front of us.

When our turn came it was already a an hour after we had disembarked the plane. The immigration officer here took our landing papers, passports with Visas and arrival declaration card. She asked us about how much total money (all monetary instruments including cash, bank draft etc.) we had with us and also what was our address in Toronto. I had less than 10K in cash and the rest was in Bank draft form. She din't ask to see the cash or the bank draft. She wrote the total amount and the address on the COPR (landing paper) of the principal applicant. She then entered some information on the computer and explained us when we can expect our PR cards to arrive at the address we provided. She welcomed us to Canada and told us that we are now Permanent Residents of Canada and we have the same rights as a Canadian Citizen except that we cannot vote in General Elections. Please note that I had already brought with us the filled PR card application forms for the 3 of us but she did not use them and returned the filled forms back to me after noting the residential address from there. I asked her explicitly that if she needed the forms and she said no. She replied that the PR cards will be applied for automatically after the landing procedure is complete and it will be mailed to the address I have provided now.

She then gave back a carbon copy of the COPR, Arrival declaration card and the passports back to us and directed us to another counter where we collected a new immigrant welcome package.

Upon exiting that room there was another counter which provided us with details about Services Canada office for SIN application.

We exited that area and then went down the escalator to collect our luggage. Since we had 9 pieces of luggage, we hired a porter to help us. He brought with him a huge trolley and went to the belt to find our boxes and luggage. The porter seemed to be quite experienced with new immigrants and knew exactly where to take me after collecting all the pieces of luggage. We went to an area where had to declare our luggage. There was a short queue there (4 to 5 people in front of us). I had my accompanying goods list and the Goods to follow list 2 copies each ready with me together with the arrival declarations card. Both goods lists were B4 forms with Qorax's excel sheet format as addendums, jewellery valuation certificate and jewellery photographs labelled according to the valuation certificate.

After waiting for 20 mins in that queue, the customs officer called us. I gave here the documents and she was impressed with the organization of the lists. She dint even bother to look at the huge trolley with all the luggage. She just started entering information in here computer on the total value of the things that I had and will follow. She then stamped the extra copies of the accompanying and the goods to follow lists (also stamped each of the attachements, jewellery valuation certificate and the back side of the photographs). After that she took all the documents to the customs cashier counter and had the lists registered there. She attached a casual goods accounting document mentioning the total value of the goods + the money brought with me with my copies of the lists and gave them back to me. She again welcomed me to Canada and wished me good luck.

The porter with all the luggage then took us towards the final exit where our relatives were waiting for us. It took approx. 2 hours in total for us to go through immigration and customs. The time was mostly waiting time in the queues but the process went extremely smoothly. Without any hiccups at all.

One advise I would like to give to everyone: Please organize your documents and prepare your goods lists efficiently. It really makes a huge difference!

I would like to thank everyone on this forum who have contributed their experience specially PMM, Qorax and Maaties. Following their advices really made my experience very smooth. A BIG THANK YOU!!

Nanji