I 'landed' today by crossing the border.
For anyone else already living in Canada and planning to land in this way, this is how it worked:
We (my husband and I) drove across the Lewiston border to the States. I told the USA border control officer that our reason for crossing was to simply turn around again so I could land, and he was very nice and said I wasn't the first to land today! As usual though, I had to go into the USA border control office to get a temporary visa to enter the US. However, when called up to the front, the officer told me there were two options:
1) get the temporary visa to the US (a green piece of paper stapled to my passport), carry on across the border and then turn around once in the US;
or 2) be turned around right there, in a process called 'flagpoling' - this is essentially being refused admittance to the US, but the officer assured me this did NOT have to be declared on any questionnaire asking if I'd been refused admittance, since it was just for the processing of immigration documents.
The only reason to choose option 1 would be if we had planned to do some shopping or something in the US; so we chose option 2 and were immediately directed through a special route towards the Canadian border control office. We went inside and within ten minutes we were on our way again. The officer didn't ask any questions other than my Canadian address to send the PR card to. He checked my passport and the Confirmation of Permanent Residence document I received from Sydney, then tore out my Student Visa and stapled in my copy of the COPR. He explained the PR card would come in 6-8 weeks, gave me a print-out with some info on getting a new SIN, and said Congratulations!! Altogether a painless process, and not requiring an appointment, which landing at a CIC office would do.
The very best of luck to all of you!!!
Please feel free to update the spreadsheet with your own information as the process moves along.
