Hello forum members.
I've been a silent reader for a while and I would like to share my landing experience.
Before doing the flagpole I searched the forum but wanted to see recent posts. Maybe my post will help someone.
I'm a primary applicant with a husband. I applied under CEC category, inland. I was sure that we will receive the interview appointment, however, we received a PPR. Once passport were back we decided to do a flagpole at Niagara (we both don't have USA visas).
Flagpole is available only on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday from 8AM.
We chose Wednesday. We started to cross the bridge at 7.20AM.
Reached to USA side, officer was very nice and welcoming. She took our passports, gave us a flagpole paper and we returned back to Canadian border at 7.40AM. There were already 4 people in front of us. Exactly at 8AM they started to let people in. Officer asked us passports, flagpole paper and current study/work permit; gave us a yellow paper and asked to go to the building outside. There we gave all those papers again and was asked to have a seat - once the officer is ready they will call us.
Time passed by, there were taking some people with study/work permits extensions I believe, but didn't hear anyone with landing. Around 10AM someone asked if they can do the flagpole and the officer said that for now they don't accept new flagpolers and he can try after 3PM - to be fair it was around 30 people waiting inside.
In about 3,5 hours officer called our names and invited us to the office.
He checked that there is no crimes, no other dependants, etc - we initialled the CoPRs, he signed them as well, stapled to our passports and crossed off our immigrant visas. He said how many days we have to be in CAnada to not to lose the status, congratulated us and apologized for a delay.
Totally it took us about 4,5 hours form the moment we started to walk towards US but... end of story, we finally became PR in Canada.
Also we wanted to change our SIN from temporary to permanent and drive to Service Canada (6 minutes drive). The nice lady said since the landing was less than 24 hours ago (in reality we did it about 1 hour before heading to Service Canada), she can try to issue the new SIN but if our files are not available in the system yet, then they will have to send it to us by mail and it can take 6 weeks. We decided not to take a risk and peacefully changed it 2 days later in Toronto.
For OHIP - be sure to have your old work permit, in this case there will be no waiting period of 3 months
I hope this post might help someone If there is any questions, I'm happy to help!
I've been a silent reader for a while and I would like to share my landing experience.
Before doing the flagpole I searched the forum but wanted to see recent posts. Maybe my post will help someone.
I'm a primary applicant with a husband. I applied under CEC category, inland. I was sure that we will receive the interview appointment, however, we received a PPR. Once passport were back we decided to do a flagpole at Niagara (we both don't have USA visas).
Flagpole is available only on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday from 8AM.
We chose Wednesday. We started to cross the bridge at 7.20AM.
Reached to USA side, officer was very nice and welcoming. She took our passports, gave us a flagpole paper and we returned back to Canadian border at 7.40AM. There were already 4 people in front of us. Exactly at 8AM they started to let people in. Officer asked us passports, flagpole paper and current study/work permit; gave us a yellow paper and asked to go to the building outside. There we gave all those papers again and was asked to have a seat - once the officer is ready they will call us.
Time passed by, there were taking some people with study/work permits extensions I believe, but didn't hear anyone with landing. Around 10AM someone asked if they can do the flagpole and the officer said that for now they don't accept new flagpolers and he can try after 3PM - to be fair it was around 30 people waiting inside.
In about 3,5 hours officer called our names and invited us to the office.
He checked that there is no crimes, no other dependants, etc - we initialled the CoPRs, he signed them as well, stapled to our passports and crossed off our immigrant visas. He said how many days we have to be in CAnada to not to lose the status, congratulated us and apologized for a delay.
Totally it took us about 4,5 hours form the moment we started to walk towards US but... end of story, we finally became PR in Canada.
Also we wanted to change our SIN from temporary to permanent and drive to Service Canada (6 minutes drive). The nice lady said since the landing was less than 24 hours ago (in reality we did it about 1 hour before heading to Service Canada), she can try to issue the new SIN but if our files are not available in the system yet, then they will have to send it to us by mail and it can take 6 weeks. We decided not to take a risk and peacefully changed it 2 days later in Toronto.
For OHIP - be sure to have your old work permit, in this case there will be no waiting period of 3 months
I hope this post might help someone
If there is any questions, I'm happy to help!