Colombian Spouse- Starting PR Visa

[cinc]

Hello,

My husband is Colombian and we both live in Bogota. We were married in Canada this past December and have been together for nearly five years as a couple. We are just starting the visa application process and I'm quite nervous about the time it will take and any complications we might run into. I have a few questions that I'd be grateful for any answers and/or additional advice:

1. Will the doctor provide the necessary medical form? I have read different things about the form changing etc., and I am unsure about this. How long will it take?

2. I've read you do not need to include your criminal background check until it is requested but is it a problem if we go ahead and get it now and include it in the application? How long does it take to get the check?

3. We paid the application fees yesterday. Is there a problem if the application doesn't get there for a few weeks after the payment?

4. I plan on working when we get back to Canada and he plans on going to school for a doctorate. I'm concerned that because neither of us has a secure offer that this will work against us. I have a home in my name in Canada that is paid for that we can live in and we have significant savings. Will this be enough?

5. We are both in work contracts/school until June 2014. If by some miracle we get the resident Visa before June 2014 can we wait until June/July to go to Canada together? What are the rules for how soon you need to go to Canada if granted the Visa? Any idea if it is likely we will get it before June 2014?

6. As a non-Canadian resident I do not file taxes and do not have a "notice of assessment." I have included in our application an explanation of this. I can provide pay stubs and a letter from my employer here in Bogota for the past 5 years. Should I be concerned about this?

7. Can anyone in Bogota suggest a reliable, economical, and fast company to send our application to Canada? Given that we will be including photos, emails, letters, etc., it will be quite heavy and I want to ensure it gets to the processing centre in Mississauga.

Thank you in advance for any help or advice you have to offer!

 

[fandv]

Hello,

My husband is Colombian and we both live in Bogota. We were married in Canada this past December and have been together for nearly five years as a couple. We are just starting the visa application process and I'm quite nervous about the time it will take and any complications we might run into. I have a few questions that I'd be grateful for any answers and/or additional advice:

1. Will the doctor provide the necessary medical form? I have read different things about the form changing etc., and I am unsure about this. How long will it take?

2. I've read you do not need to include your criminal background check until it is requested but is it a problem if we go ahead and get it now and include it in the application? How long does it take to get the check?

3. We paid the application fees yesterday. Is there a problem if the application doesn't get there for a few weeks after the payment?

4. I plan on working when we get back to Canada and he plans on going to school for a doctorate. I'm concerned that because neither of us has a secure offer that this will work against us. I have a home in my name in Canada that is paid for that we can live in and we have significant savings. Will this be enough?

5. We are both in work contracts/school until June 2014. If by some miracle we get the resident Visa before June 2014 can we wait until June/July to go to Canada together? What are the rules for how soon you need to go to Canada if granted the Visa? Any idea if it is likely we will get it before June 2014?

6. As a non-Canadian resident I do not file taxes and do not have a "notice of assessment." I have included in our application an explanation of this. I can provide pay stubs and a letter from my employer here in Bogota for the past 5 years. Should I be concerned about this?

7. Can anyone in Bogota suggest a reliable, economical, and fast company to send our application to Canada? Given that we will be including photos, emails, letters, etc., it will be quite heavy and I want to ensure it gets to the processing centre in Mississauga.

Thank you in advance for any help or advice you have to offer!

¡Hola!

My thoughts:

1. At the end of your husband's medical check-up session, then his DMP (Designated Medical Practitioner) should give what's called "Copy 1 of Medical Report: Client Biodata and Summary"

If you got that thing, then you got the new form, and you should submit it along with your application. The new form has been mandatory since 1 November 2012. Please read this for more information.

However, it looks like not all DMPs all over the world have been given the new forms by the CIC. As an example, my wife did her exam in December 2012, and yet she still got the old "Copy 2 of the medical report - Section A".

However according to Spoken05 who spoke to a CIC officer, the old form will still be accepted, should the DMP still give that:

http://www.canadavisa.com/canada-immigration-discussion-board/answer-to-all-the-emedical-exam-questions-t131979.0.html

By the way, before coming to the DMP's office, I suggest that you or your husband give them a call in advance, to find out what documentations are required. I did that for my wife, and what she had to bring were:

- Appendix A of the regional guide (now no longer available since the new form got introduced)
- Her eyeglasses
- The medical exam fee (your doctor's office will tell you how much)
- 5 pieces of 4x6 photos
- Her passport

But your husband's DMP might have different requirements, so yes just give him/her a call. Here's a list of DMPs in Colombia...lucky you both that there are 3 in Bogota ;D

http://www.cic.gc.ca/dmp-md/medicalinfo.aspx?CountryID=2086&CountryName=Colombia


You asked how long it will take? You meant the medical exam? My wife's took 1 hour, and at the end she got the (old) form (which we then submitted it together with our application.)

2. If possible at all, get the police certificate done in advance and submit it with your application, to prevent potential delays. My wife's visa office is in Singapore, and I actually talked to an officer in the Singapore visa office, who confirmed that the police certificate could be sent later until they request for it. Nonetheless, we still submitted it together with our application.

I really don't know how long it takes for a police clearance certificate to be released in Colombia, and I think it's different from one country to another. In my wife's country (Indonesia), normally it takes between 30 minutes to 1 day, however my wife got hers in about 1 month, because the provincial police department from which we requested the clearance had a system upgrade, and also they collided with some public holidays, so things got delayed badly, unfortunately!

3. Not too sure...I don't think the fee payment has an expiry date. Unless the fees have suddenly increased, I think it's okay to send the application a few weeks after paying; not that big of a deal I suppose . We submitted our application 11 days after paying.

4. There's no minimum income requirement for spousal sponsorship, so I think you guys will be fine. Just write them a letter explaining what you will do to support your husband once he lands in Canada. You can also provide supporting documents, such as your bank account statement to show your savings, and the fact that you already have a house, etc. There's a member on this forum whose username is Sweden, and her Canadian sponsor got approved while still being a student......

5. Can't answer that as that varies from one person to another. But a general rule of thumb is, the PR visa's validity depends on 2 things:

a. the remaining validity of the medical exam results
b. the remaining validity of the sponsored person's passport

Some people have had to get their second medical exam (because the medical exam results are valid for only 1 year, and when their PR was about to be released, the results expired already, and so the VO requested a second medical), thus having about 1 year to land in Canada before the PR visa becomes invalid.

In some extreme cases, people had to land within literally days after getting the PR! but if I understand correctly, it doesn't happen that often, so I think you should be fine...

To give you an idea how long it takes for applications to get processed at the Bogota visa office, take a look at the following:

trackitt.com/canada-immigration-trackers/family-class

You can filter the results so that you'll see only the Bogota cases. How to do it: at the top you will see some drop down menus. So choose the following parameters:

Nationality: Colombia
Canadian visa office: Bogota, Colombia
Family program: Spouses & Partners
Application status: All

And click "Go"

And then you will see tons of columns. Scroll all the way to the right, and find a column that says "Total Processing Time"

There are 483 days between today (3 February 2013) until 1 June 2014 (I picked a random date in the month of your graduation ), and as you can see in the Bogota table at trackitt.com, out of the 16 cases that already got approved, 15 of them got approved in less than 483 days, and only one of them took longer (523 days).

So I'd say there's a good likelihood (though not guaranteed) that you will get yours approved before you graduate/the work contract expires, IF you submit the application within the next few weeks .

6. Not too sure about this. But I know that people do get approved to sponsor even without the Option C, and they provided an explanation as to why an Option C was not provided.

7. If you want to be safe, you can use a premium courier, such as FedEx, UPS, or DHL. But be warned that they are expensive!! You can try to look into what's called "EMS" (Express Mail Service) which is a universal express mail service available globally. We sent our application from Indonesia, and we use the "Pos Indonesia's" EMS service, and our package took a total of 8 days to reach CPC-Mississauga, and I think that's very reasonable, considering our package had to travel 16 000 km .

Our package was 6,4 kg, and we paid the equivalent of CAD 156 to mail it to CPC-Mississauga using the Indonesian EMS. With FedEx it would've cost us roughly CAD 325!

Bogota is way closer to Mississauga, so if you were to use the Colombian EMS, I think it would get to CPC-M a lot quicker than ours did.

According to Wikipedia, Colombia's EMS service is called "EMS International"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Express_mail

Oh by the way...a very important thing: it looks like you plan to remain outside Canada during the whole process. In case you didn't already know, you absolutely must provide proofs, detailed plans, supporting documents, etc that show that you will resettle in Canada once your husband receives his PR.

Good luck

 

[cinc]

Hi Fandv,
THANK YOU so much for taking the time to go through all of that. I feel hopeful. Fingers crossed it all goes smoothly. Thanks especially for the family class tracker. I hadn't seen that before!

Gracias!

 

[ccunnington]

Join us on the Bogota thread...lots of us there going through the process!!

http://www.canadavisa.com/canada-immigration-discussion-board/bogota-visa-office-2012-applicants-t109614.495.html