One Piece of Advice

[Heckler]

Don't procrastinate. I did that and my process has not even begun yet. It took 10 months just to get the paperwork together for us.

I'm with you on that one. Both my wife & I can get fairly stressed out when dealing with "official" paperwork & as a result I finally got my visa at least 9 months later than I could have done! Thats 9 months more spent apart where we could have been together :'(

I would also say don't be scared by the paperwork. It looks horribly intimidating but in reality it was all very straightforward, everyt hing you need to know IS in the guide. Just take a few deep breaths & read it through several times.

My other piece of advice is to leave getting the medical until you already have all of the other main pieces of paperwork together. I got mine done early but then my wife discovered her tax office had messed up her previuos years information & it took 3 months for them to correct it. Meaning by the time my visa came though I had under 3 months before it expired. That wasn't a huge problem for me as it was just myself moving & I had no property or any other complicated things to sort before I could leave. If you have kids or pets or something like that it could be a major problem.


Ooooh & make sure you SIGN everything!!!!! In fact I sent signed but otherwise blank spare copies of my bits of the paperwork to my wife who was submitting it all. Just so she could read through it all & could correct anything just in case I'd made any mistakes.

 

[Bangkokcanuck]

The only thing I did that really seems to have helped my wife and I forget about the process while it is ongoing was this.....

I did the whole application from start to finish without ANY input from her at all.

I did all the labeling packing up etc..etc.. and we put it together as if it was going to be shipped...

Then left it on the kitchen table for a week.

We then unpacked it all and she went it through it from start to finish never having seen it all before and we actually found a couple of minor mistakes (are any of them really minor?) corrected them and repacked it for shipping.

Then I opened it again a few days later went through from start to finish and this time felt it was ready, my wife then took another look and agreed so we repacked it and shipped it.

We have piece of mind that what we sent it is the best possible application we could have sent with the amount of proof provided that we feel is enough. That is all we or anyone can do, you have no way to read the mind of whatever VO you get and what they care about or put more weight on.. so just do the best you can and be prepared to defend it if needed.

 

[Love_Young]

(640 pages!)

Thank goodness we weren't the only ones with a big application. I think ours was 424 pages long.
Not sure how good it will do for us but I wanted to know I gave them a variety of evidence.

Don't procrastinate. I did that and my process has not even begun yet. It took 10 months just to get the paperwork together for us.

It took us 10 months to put the application together too. But I am a perfectionist and was constantly worrying if what I was doing wasn't what they were looking for as far as evidence goes. Then one day I just had to send it off with lots of luck and prayers. I couldn't procrastinate anymore. I still don't think that even if I worked on it for 10 years that it would be good enough to how I wanted it but hey, I am my own worst critic.

 

[bobshynoswife]

You glorious, magnificent woman <3 Someone should make you President of the World or something

My husband has Seriously though, I just wanted him here really, really badly, and decided not to leave any stone unturned. We had a lot of evidence because of using regular phone, daily emails, daily skype chats, weekly postcards and letters and also a lot of evidence from 8 trips overseas. Since we were dealing with a really picky and difficult visa office, I figured bigger was better, which is not always the case.

I often joked that with all the communicating we did while we were apart that I would 'miss' him when he actually lives here with me! It is somewhat true, now that he's working and we have the kids to care for there aren't many 3 or 4 hour conversations like we used to have. On the other hand, I am much more productive now that I'm not spending 4 hours a day on skype and phone!

 

[Iamrobot85]

I change my piece of advice! I change it to 'if you have a car, sell it before you come to Canada, don't import it! What a pain in the arse!!!'

 

[Material]

I change my piece of advice! I change it to 'if you have a car, sell it before you come to Canada, don't import it! What a pain in the arse!!!'

LOL not sorted yet?

 

[Iamrobot85]

I think I finally got it sorted, it was just such a headache. Landing would have been 90% easier were it not for importing my car.

 

[cndcit]

Very good advice from Chelley. I would add one more. Read OP Manual 6. Then read it again. Then read it again. After the 3rd reading, start preparing the application.

Where can a person find these manuals?

 

[dakonej]

my advice....

understand YOUR processing office... what is gospel for one, may be irrelevant to another... (for example, Kingston Jamaica near ALWAYS requests original birth certificates from the applicant and marriage certificates.).... also know what your office usually considers red flags... find out why the people who have been called for an interview were called and what questions were asked... knowing these things and preparing your application to proactively address concerns that are common will put your application one step ahead......

just my thoughts!

Excellent advice! in conclusion, a clean, crisp, well organized documentation makes good impression and saves time for the reviewing officer!

Regards.

 

[Boracay]

my advice....

suggestions to do this... instead of including 100 pages of chat, 100 pages of phone records, 100 pages of emails, include 2-3 pages of each (maybe 3 "sample" days of your relationship, one from early, one from middle and one from recent) and provide the quick explaination that there are 300 more pages that you can present on request....

I tend to agree with this.
I'm concerned though. I've read several times that people have 500+ pages of evidence, or years of chat logs and emails and so on.

I for example have a year of text messages I can screen capture on my iphone. However I am just including 1 capture per month and doing my best to ensure it's relevant. For example her texting me saying that she is at home cooking us dinner, or that I won't be home I left the key under the mat.

And then stating that I can provide all the years texts if requested.

So my advice to everyone would be the same....however I have not sent an application and am far from experienced. It just seems logical.

Does anyone agree/disagree? Would love to hear your thoughts

 

[canadianwoman]

I would agree with just sending a selection of email, text messages, and phone records. I did send all my phone records, but that was because I used a land line and each month fit on one page. Also in our case that was our main proof of contact. If you have lots of different types of contact evidence, a selection of each is good enough.

 

[toby]

I think that's a good piece of advice, not to depend too much on your representation. If you do hire someone, make sure they are in good standing and, even if they are, be skeptical of EVERYTHING they say. Not to be rude or mean but make sure that YOU are always looking out for YOU. And there has been some things that my consultant has told us that has been less than accurate. Especially in relation to time lines but other things as well. He told us that if I applied to have my visitor status extended I would most likely be denied. This, according to this forum and a few people I know who also applied for a visitor's extension, was simply not true. So, if you do hire someone, do NOT take their words as gospel truth, even though they are supposed experts.

I had to fire my immigration consultant for outright ignorance of important details, and for misrepresenting his familiarity with services in China (e.g. the difficulty of getting documents certified far from my Chnese wife's home town).

It is important to get a knowledgeable consultant, someone as interested in helping as in getting the cheque up front.

Rjessome seems such a person, and I was interested to hear her say that consultants will look over one's application for (say) $500. All the consultants I contacted after firing the first consultant wanted to do the entire job, again, at full price.

 

[toby]

I agree with Material. If you have any confusion regarding the forms you can just ask here or search it. You can get all the answers to clear you confusion.

Good luck,

I eventually did the application on my own, with considerable help from this forum, but would far rather have been lucky enough to find a good immigration consultant who would have saved me all that time and research.

 

[rjessome]

I had to fire my immigration consultant for outright ignorance of important details, and for misrepresenting his familiarity with services in China (e.g. the difficulty of getting documents certified far from my Chnese wife's home town).

It is important to get a knowledgeable consultant, someone as interested in helping as in getting the cheque up front.

Rjessome seems such a person, and I was interested to hear her say that consultants will look over one's application for (say) $500. All the consultants I contacted after firing the first consultant wanted to do the entire job, again, at full price.

Hey toby, thanks for the plug! The file review is not something every consultant/lawyer does. I do and I know a few others that do as well. You must have a pretty tight retainer on this because of liability. If someone gives me an application to review but witholds information that is material to the file, I have to protect myself from being sued later on. And it works better for local applicants. To do a proper review I have to see a complete copy of the file. Who wants to cover the cost of sending a big file to Vancouver and back again when they are in China! But it does work out well as long as the applicant understands what they are getting. It's a legal opinion based on what is in front of the consultant/lawyer. I won't rewrite or redo the application when I'm retained to do a file review but I will tell you where mistakes are made and what, if anything, it is lacking and how it can be enhanced, all based on the Act, Regulations and Manuals.

 

[awor]

One piece of advice I can give is regarding child custody for US parents.

Take care of it ASAP and don't assume CIC will care your ex hasn't see the kids in a decade.

You MUST have permission by your ex to take your joint children OR you MUST have sole legal AND physical custody, with no visitation for the ex, and no state law barriers preventing you from moving without notifying the ex.

If you can't find your ex, you have to put forth a real effort to find them. If you can't find them (or they refuse to respond to say, a facebook or myspace message so you can get their address) to have the sheriff serve them with custody modification papers, you can look into having them served by publication. Because this process can take weeks or months, procrastination is not a good thing if you want to get your PR application sent.