Please excuse me while I rant about how ridiculous this idiotic process is.
I submitted my application back in October. The resources available to me said that I need to submit a Schedule A, along with two police checks; one from the country in which the principal applicant stayed the longest since they were 18 and one from the country in which they they currently live, if they had been there for at least 6 months. That's 3 documents. No problem, I submitted 2 of those with my application: a Schedule A and a police check from China (PA's home country). The PA lives in the UAE but hadn't been there for 6 months yet. No need for the second police check. Done.
Or so I thought....
In December I got a request for further police checks. Apparently the actual requirements are different from what is outlined on the CIC website. Now, on top of the original requirements, they added another: a background check from each country in which the PA has resided for more than 6 months. That means that we needed to get one from Korea. Do you have any idea how hard it is to get things like from Korea as a foreigner? Now imagine trying to do that in a paper-based society from outside of the country, not being able to speak Korean. Some of the police stations had never even heard of the type of police check that CIC wanted.
I didn't expect immigration to be a streamlined process so the ridiculousness of the situation wasn't too surprising. To be safe, I messaged CIC to ask for clarification on which background checks they needed. I think we can all guess how fruitful that was. It was something along the lines of "just look at the request letter that we sent originally and follow that". Frustrated, I sent another message that was more specific and asked only for a simply "yes" or "no". The second response was about as fruitful.
I got the police check from Korea. They then had a schedule A and police checks from both China and Korea. The PA still hadn't been in the UAE for 6 months so no need for that.
Fast forward to last week, I got pre-arrival services. Happy me! I thought the process was almost over. Nope.
Can you guess what I got today? No, not a passport request. No, not a decision made either. I got ANOTHER REQUEST FOR POLICE CHECKS!!!!!
Now they want an updated Schedule A, along with (you guessed it) a police check for every country in which the PA has resided for 6 months. I would love to ask them why. Why does it feel like they are punishing me for their inability to do things smoothly? Or perhaps some more productive questions: Is something wrong with my previous police checks? Do I need to renew the one from China? Maybe I need to get a new one from Korea? Or do I only need one from the UAE? Of course, if I ask these questions we all know what the response will be: "just look at the request letter that we sent originally and follow that".
Thank you LVO, for reminding me why I quit my job in the government back in 2011.
I submitted my application back in October. The resources available to me said that I need to submit a Schedule A, along with two police checks; one from the country in which the principal applicant stayed the longest since they were 18 and one from the country in which they they currently live, if they had been there for at least 6 months. That's 3 documents. No problem, I submitted 2 of those with my application: a Schedule A and a police check from China (PA's home country). The PA lives in the UAE but hadn't been there for 6 months yet. No need for the second police check. Done.
Or so I thought....
In December I got a request for further police checks. Apparently the actual requirements are different from what is outlined on the CIC website. Now, on top of the original requirements, they added another: a background check from each country in which the PA has resided for more than 6 months. That means that we needed to get one from Korea. Do you have any idea how hard it is to get things like from Korea as a foreigner? Now imagine trying to do that in a paper-based society from outside of the country, not being able to speak Korean. Some of the police stations had never even heard of the type of police check that CIC wanted.
I didn't expect immigration to be a streamlined process so the ridiculousness of the situation wasn't too surprising. To be safe, I messaged CIC to ask for clarification on which background checks they needed. I think we can all guess how fruitful that was. It was something along the lines of "just look at the request letter that we sent originally and follow that". Frustrated, I sent another message that was more specific and asked only for a simply "yes" or "no". The second response was about as fruitful.
I got the police check from Korea. They then had a schedule A and police checks from both China and Korea. The PA still hadn't been in the UAE for 6 months so no need for that.
Fast forward to last week, I got pre-arrival services. Happy me! I thought the process was almost over. Nope.
Can you guess what I got today? No, not a passport request. No, not a decision made either. I got ANOTHER REQUEST FOR POLICE CHECKS!!!!!
Now they want an updated Schedule A, along with (you guessed it) a police check for every country in which the PA has resided for 6 months. I would love to ask them why. Why does it feel like they are punishing me for their inability to do things smoothly? Or perhaps some more productive questions: Is something wrong with my previous police checks? Do I need to renew the one from China? Maybe I need to get a new one from Korea? Or do I only need one from the UAE? Of course, if I ask these questions we all know what the response will be: "just look at the request letter that we sent originally and follow that".
Thank you LVO, for reminding me why I quit my job in the government back in 2011.
