The truth? About 7 years or so. Not even joking.
We first started in about 2008, when my now-husband was renewing his visitor status we put in the application that we were going to file for PR, and they extended the visitor record and gave some helpful advice on how to begin the process. Ahhh the good ole days.
At that time we had loads of money due to a successful business. We procrastinated on it a lot, mostly my fault as I was very anxious about it and am good at ignoring things.
Eventually we realized he needed another status extension, so we thought it would look bad when we said we were applying for PR in the last application, and we madly put together a common law application for inland around 2010. That was his first medical.
Around that time I found these forums, and I learned about this thing called "outland sponsorship". I didn't have a clue about it before hand. At the time at least, the CIC website was a flustercluck and gave no clear information about this . I then realized how many mistakes we made on our application, so thanks to advice on this forum we cancelled the application and got a refund. We even sent our pictures on a DVD disk, for god's sake.
We moved to another city and started the paperwork again, he got his fingerprints and FBI cert again, #3. Still didn't send it in.
Again more stress and procrastination, and money getting low, and in 2012 we rode our bikes down the pacific coast with a stop in San Francisco for his medical. He got his finger prints in some hick town in Washington. I thought it would look better if we applied outside Canada then returned once I got SA. That was medical #2, FBI #3.
Then we got married while in the US, and more problems with getting all the documentation while away from home led us to just get nExus cards instead and again procrastinate on the PR. I filled everything out but never sent it in. So we returned to Canada.
That summer I was determined to get on this PR thing. He got his FBI cert yet again (I think like the 4th time) but yet AGAIN I procrastinated on it until Dec 2014 when I had a return of my panic attacks. I knew it was the stress of his status in Canada contributing to it.
So finally, I started in January and we finished by the end of February. Everything, FBI fingerprints(lucky us got by using a channeler at the time) Medical #3 FBI # 4 or 5, ha.
FINALLY he landed July 11 2015, yippeee!
After filling it out so many times it wasn't too hard for us. Just takes a bit of practice. But seriously, just take your time, read all the instructions and fine print and you will be fine.
Summary: Procrastinated for years out of fear, in the end it was no big deal.
