We received a passport request on Friday February 18 and drove to Buffalo on Tuesday February 22 to pick up the visa and land.
I was avoiding updating here because I didn't want to upset poor Dralon. So I am so very pleased to see that you've received PPR at long last!
Congrats to you and to everyone else who has received PPR recently. Wow, Buffalo is on a roll!
Here's my landing story:
We left Toronto around 5:45. This was about 45 minutes later than I wanted to leave, but I couldn't sleep the night before and then slept through my alarm!
We drove straight to the border, aside from one stop at Timmy's for breakfast. We took the Queenston-Lewiston Bridge and arrived there before 8am. There was no line-up. We gave the US agent Mexi's Mexican passport and his US visa. We had to park the car and wait for half an hour or so and then Mexi was questioned by an agent. He wanted to know if Mexi had ever been in the United States before (he had) and how long he'd been in Canada. He also wanted to see his Canadian visas to see if he was in Canada legally. Eventually he was satisfied and we were on our way.
We drove straight to Buffalo after that and parked near the HSBC building. Upon entering the building, a very kindly gentlemen working as security identified us as people there for the Cdn Consulate (it must have been our confused faces!) and he checked our passports and showed us to the elevator. We arrived at around 9:30. The room was full. We checked in and sat down to wait. They called up the people who were receiving PR visas in groups of 5 or 6. We done and out of there by 11:00 am, and they asked us to wait one hour before crossing the border in order to permit them to update the computer system. Everyone we dealt with at the Consulate was very friendly and efficient. . . so I started to feel a little guilty for all the bad thoughts I've had about them over the delays in our file.
To pass the time we drove to East Aurora and went to Bill's Tavern for some buffalo wings and beef on weck (a really amazing beef sandwich popular in Buffalo). The people were super nice and the wings were easily the best I've ever had. But they are so hot! The extra spicy was much hotter than the hottest suicide wings in Toronto. Next time I would get hot, Mexi said he'd go with medium. Anyway, I thought I would mention that as an option for people looking to pass some time who don't feel like hitting the outlets. I found the wings to be much tastier here than at the Anchor Bar (although the Anchor Bar of course gets the sentimental vote for being the birthplace of the buffalo wing). Anyway, if you are obsessed with food like we are, it's a fun thing to do while in the neighbourhood.
Then we drove to Niagara Falls and crossed at the Rainbow Bridge. It took about 15 minutes to land. I have been fantasizing about hearing the immigration agent tell Mexi "Welcome to Canada" for 2 years and I was so excited to hear it. . . but then I got distracted and I missed her saying it. But she said it!
I found both the US and the Canadian border officials to be efficient and polite. But wow, are there ever a lot of people working there, especially in the US office! Perhaps we were just there at particularly slow times, but on both sides there were lots of agents and hardly any travellers.
Mexi has been living in Canada for over two years and there were no goods to follow so we didn't need to do anything about that.
We were going to do something in Niagara Falls, but then we realized it was only 1:30 or so and so we hoofed it back to Toronto at top speed and went to a Service Canada office and got Mexi's SIN number.
It was a great day and I still can't believe it's finally over. Thanks to everyone here for reading all my stressed-out posts over the past year.
