Hi guys,
I landed on Saturday (July 27) at the Douglas (Peace Arch) Border Crossing in White Rock, BC (Vancouver area) and I just want to share my landing experience with you.
I received my passport back on Friday afternoon. Here is the short story about it: since I sent a prepaid envelope to CPP-O, I saw when my tracker got activated and started checking it every hour ;D on Friday, at 9:46 am, tracking system showed that it was delivered so I called my BF and asked him to open the envelope. But there was nothing delivered!
and this is when you start panicking that either you gave the wrong address or they lost your passport... Package was delivered at 2:40 PM (which is 5 hours later from the Canada Post website update. 5 hours of panicking
??? ;D ;D )
Anyways, I got it and didn't want to wait any longer. Even though Peace Arch is a pretty busy crossing, especially on weekends, I went there Saturday night anyways (around 8 pm). My BF and I simply drive there and parked behind duty free (there is a right turn to Beach Rd before the duty free building, parking by the Peace Arch park - simply google it because it's the point of no return
after that you'll have to stand in the line and cross the border).
My BF is a Canadian so he just joined me in this trip, he didn't do any landing; however, if you are bringing Canadian friends with you - make sure they have passport or drivers license (why? see below).
So we parked and simply walked towards the US Border, passed the box that people drive through, nobody even noticed us and officers in the boxes didn't even try to stop us. Simply, there was nobody around to stop us
we went inside the building and went to the line "C" - for pedestrians. When officer called, he was really surprised that I was walking, so I explained that I was flagpoling. Easy-peasy! He took my passport, entered everything, filled the papers and crossed my US visa (which expired in January). Then he called my BF and entered his info in the system too. And here is the reason your Canadian friends need a passport - for them it doesn't matter if they are crossing or not crossing, they are in the building and need to show an ID.
Interesting and actually understandable that he didn't give us the papers back inside the building. He asked us to go out and move towards Canada where he met us with the papers and docs, gave those to us and made sure that we were walking back to Canada ;D And we did. Straight towards the Canadian border. Which is not that easy to cross - comparing to US you'll have to go through the box where you will be stopped by the officer.
So he asked us to wait while he finished with one of the cars; took the papers and asked a few general questions like weapons/drugs/alcohol/money/other goods being shipped and brought into Canada. No. We were sent inside the building, line B according to the yellow paper he gave us.
There was a line inside but it was moving really fast and let me tell you, Canadian officers are always so nice. One of them called us, took the papers and asked to sit and wait. Then called me again, I answered NO to the general questions (you can actually see them in your COPR) about being refused to enter Canada, being in prison etc. and signed my COPR and the copy of it and was asked to sit and wait again
And then he called us last time, handed the papers, docs and a small Canadian flag with "Congratulations". That's it.
Well, since I'm getting married in 3 weeks, he explained what should I do about my PR and other papers after the wedding and name change.
That is it. We went towards the car and returned home to celebrate
The whole thing took me a little bit less that an hour...50 mins or so, from the point I entered the US border building to the point I left the Canadian border building. In total, from applying for BC PNP nomination to the landing day (which means the process is completed) - it took 9.5 months.
For landing I took my passport (with all the work and study permits which have been removed by Canadian officer later), letter of nomination from BC PNP and COPRs (the ones that CPP-O sent to me). No payments neither in US nor in Canada.
I did flagpoling because I knew that sometimes Canadian border asks for the paper from the States (with the refusal to enter). Some people simply go around the arch and come back to Canada without actually going to the States, but I was honest at that point. My visa expired so I just did the whole thing.
I guess this is it... easy and pretty fast 8)
Cheers,
Kate.
