Landing Experience/Coming Back to the US using AVR
Let me begin by saying this is my first post. But I am not new to the site nor the AINP. I have been a passive participant of this forum all along while reading invaluable posts/comments by ingegarcia, dnataraj, chow, akk, ccharbert, rascojenkins, nix1, despoimmigrant just to name a few. Posting my landing experience may be my small contribution in exchange for so much info/help I got from this forum.
I am an SRS-H-1B nominee (nominated back in Jan 2009) and subsequently applied to CIC. Did medicals in last May and finally got my immigrant visa in last Sept. I (along with my wife and a 3-year old son) landed in Canada via Niagara Falls (Rainbow bridge) on March 1st week. The lady officer at the entry-point asked me few questions like: purpose of the visit, how many people, any goods you want to import today, money in excess of C$10k, any firearms in the vehicle etc. I told her I will be doing landing formalities for now and will permanently move in the summer. Once I answered to here questions, she handed me a yellow slip and asked me to go to the building to her left. I checked with one of he officers inside and he did the paperwork for me (he did not greet me however, neither at the beginning or at the end of the process
).
Few important questions/answers are as follows:
1. The very first thing he asked was did I have a bank statement (be prepared guys...) and I had one.
2. I provided my friend's address and he asked me whether it was my own address. I said it was my own addrees
3. He was done with the paparwork and asked me to go to another officer at the far right for the goods-to-follow list approval. I was driving the same vehicle that I had listed as vehicle to follow. The new officer simply agreed that I could do the necessary paperwork for my vehicle when I permanently move in summer. He approved/stamped my goods-to-follow list and handed back to me.
In a nutshell, pretty much everything went very smoothly. I aked the same officer if he could give the address for the nearby Service Canada office and he did (it was so nice of him). I drove a couple of miles and applied for the SIN card. Within a couple of hours, we were done with landing and decided to head back the US.
Coming back to the US was not that bad either. I showed my counterfieted Canadian Immigrant visa and my current H-1B at the entry point (my expired US visa was on my another expired passport and the officer did not ask for that passport for some reason). He took those documents and simply wanted us to park the vehicle at their parking space and go on the second floor of the building to the left and collect our documents. After few minutes of waiting inside the building, an officer called us inside, asked few questions like where I had been in Canada, for how long, where I live in the US and what I did (he was double-checking with me everything he already knew I guess). He banged our documents on the front desk and said, "you are all set". Voila.....
We were happy to be in the US again!
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