My story that can maybe help you get through the process easier...

[wilder1047]

Hey guys,

I believe it's been almost 2 years since I posted in here before, CRAZY...

I felt bad because I got so much solid information from this forum and after I successfully got my wife into the country I kind of just disappeared.

So, this is me giving back, I know that I was perhaps fortunate with my circumstances in some ways, but take what you can and apply on your end and maybe give some motivation in how potentially easy it can be..

My story is, I lived in Thailand for a year, with my then, girlfriend, and ran a restaurant. She ended up getting pregnant, the restaurant wasn't going to support us and the baby, so I opted to come back to Canada and get a job.

Never having any sort of foresight into actually bringing her to Canada over that entire year, we had ZERO documentation of our time together, no photos, we hadn't co-signed a single lease, bills... nothing, really no proof to even show we had been together for that time.

So, I came home, got a job, and started working, supporting her back in Thailand.

Just over a year later I went back over there and married her, just a two week visit, signed the marriage papers (no ceremony) and got as many photos as we could, me with the family, us around Bangkok, we had a little party with her family on the night of us signing the papers, that we also got tons of photos of.

I came home and got to work on the Sponsorship process which took me a LONG time because of how obsessive I was of making sure everything was perfect. It's hard with sponsoring a Thai from a poor rice farming family simply because they really have nothing on paper, everything they do is done through cash, and very little schooling as they generally drop out quite early to support their families.

Anyways, any sort of discrepancy or anything of any kind, I would fill out the sponsorship paper work, and then on another piece of paper, make a note referencing that specific question, explained it more thoroughly, e-mailed it to my wife to print, sign, scan and e-mail back to me, which I then printed out and and included in the package.

I printed all the pictures I could from my marriage trip and included this in the package (maybe 70 pictures?)

I also printed off every e-mail we had during our time apart.

We did chat on the phone every night, but due to my circumstances, I had very little documentation through phone bills to show of our talks, I often used calling cards, which didn't show who I was calling.

I sent all of that in around June 2010 and got a response back by September 2010 confirming I was eligible for sponsorship.

In October I went over for two weeks, the very first thing we did was go to the Thai embassy and apply for a tourist visa for the wife and get my sons Canadian citizenship and passport.

Everything literally came down the wire, the day before our departure we picked up my wifes Tourist Visa and got my sons temporary passport (which is actually white, much cooler then the regular blue..) that night we were out and about shopping, got back to our hotel, the embassy had called us, and apparently his permanent passport had come in, and we were able to get there in time to pick it up before they closed.

Pretty amazing, I wasn't even planning to bring my son in as a Canadian citizen, thought it'd be faster to get him a tourist visa and then apply for citizenship here, but they said that was not possible, so I got his citizenship and permanent Canadian Passport in just under 2 weeks!

Anyways, feel free to ask me any questions...

 

[I.N]

Thank you sharing your story with us... .

 

[Sweetmine]

Thabks for sharing your story.
You applied for a tourist visa for your wife and she reveived her permanent resident status after she came to Canada?
Did she go through a interview at all?

 

[wilder1047]

I got my wife a tourist visa with the paper work confirming my eligibility to sponsor her. Don't quote me on this but I believe once a person who is being sponsored is in the country they are able to stay until Canada has decided to grant permanent residence or not. Which she did get around Feb 2011.

There was no interview process, I contribute that to how thorough I was with all the paper work ensuring any answer that was in anyway unclear was clarified with a written explanation signed by both of us and date. The interview would have been nearby impossible for us financially

 

[canadianwoman]

Thanks for letting us know how everything went.

It is amazing she got a TRV with a PR application in process, especially from Thailand. We've seen other people in similar situations on here who just had the workers at the embassy laugh when they submitted a TRV app with a PR in process.

 

[bu ayaan]

Thanks for sharing your story...

I am surprised your wife got her TRV after you applied for her sponsorship. I have heard in most cases they reject it.

 

[friedbrains]

i also have a TRV and with an on-going PR...

 

[Fencesitter]

I also included explanations for most of the forms where applicable, but we didn't sign our names, as we never imagined that would be necessary given the fact that the explanations were attached to either my forms (sponsor) or her forms (principal applicant). We assume CIC will know this...is that okay, or should we have signed like the OP did?

FS

 

[Marty11]

FS, relax, you are ok. Once an explanation is attached, you have to reference the Question number, page number and IMM form number. The IMM form is signed either by you or by your wife, and there is one which is signed by both. In one of them you declare that everything is truthful. That covers everything. And nowhere in the guide says that if you attach a paper with more explanation to a question, you have to sign it.

So, relax and anjoy ....

 

[wilder1047]

Thanks for letting us know how everything went.

It is amazing she got a TRV with a PR application in process, especially from Thailand. We've seen other people in similar situations on here who just had the workers at the embassy laugh when they submitted a TRV app with a PR in process.

Well, I don't know about other countries, but as long as you present your Eligibity of sponsorship plus a decent TRV application with sufficient funds in the bank (we had $5,000 CAD) Bangkok Embassy will grant you a TRV.

It's not a matter of being lucky or anything, they had actually told me that she would get her TRV aslong as we applied this way. But, I'm really not sure about other countries, or if the Bangkok Embassy has perhaps changed this rule since then..

So, it might be an idea for you guys to ask your respective embassys to see if they honour this because otherwise we would have been apart for an additional 6+ months.

Of course, you still don't know if your application will require an interview at a later time, and by bringing the applicant to Canada you're travelling further away from the location the interviews are held (in our case Singapore), so it would have been a real hit to the pocket book having to fly us ALL back to Singapore for the interview, something to consider.

 

[wilder1047]

I also included explanations for most of the forms where applicable, but we didn't sign our names, as we never imagined that would be necessary given the fact that the explanations were attached to either my forms (sponsor) or her forms (principal applicant). We assume CIC will know this...is that okay, or should we have signed like the OP did?

FS

Haha my post wasn't meant to scare people at all. I think that my method was completely overboard we were just so concerned about having to do the interview process. I'm sure you'll do just fine.

I know a few people where the person being sponsored is actually the one that did all of the application work, and you could barely sit down and have a conversation with them in English. So, I could only imagine what the visa offices must actually see come through there..