Moving to Canada

in·def·i·nite

(adjective)
1.   not definite; without fixed or specified limit; unlimited: an indefinite number.

2.   not clearly defined or determined; not precise or exact: an indefinite boundary; an indefinite date in the future.

For those who came upon this post whilst searching the InterWebNet for information related to applying for Indefinite Leave to Remain or Permanent Residency for Canada – or for those who, like me, just require a sense of completeness or closure – I thought I should provide a brief overview of the tortuous passage that the Kickass Canada Girl and I negotiated earlier this year – and of how that particular journey ended.

As the Girl is – obviously – Canadian and I am far too old to be considered of any use to the Canadian (or indeed any other) economy, my particular route to permanent residency was inevitably going to involve sponsorship by my spouse – the aforementioned KACG. The thinking and logic behind this were outlined in ‘A Tough Occupation‘.

I subsequently gave more details of the Girl’s side of the process in ‘A Word from our Sponsor‘ and an outline of what I would be required to do in ‘Prerequisites‘. ‘Doctor, Doctor‘ tells the convoluted tale of the hoops through which this particular applicant had to jump to acquire the necessary medical certificate, whilst ‘A Little Application… 1‘ and ‘A Little Application… 2‘ completed the description of the plethora of forms that must be filled out and the extensive quantity of supporting information that must be submitted along with them. By the end of June – when I traveled to Victoria to spend a couple of frazzled weeks with the Girl and our dear friends in Saanichton – everything was complete on my side and I carried a weighty package of documentation with me which I handed over to the Girl to accompany her submission to Citizenship and Immigration Canada.

At this point the trail goes cold. Those who follow these things avidly will be wondering what has happened to my application since then and what effect our recent change of plan will have had upon it.

The short answer is – nothing!

The application was never actually submitted. The Girl – who as part of the sponsorship deal was going to have to agree to support me financially (if so called upon) for three years – was not able to file her submission as her employment details could not be completed until her six month probationary period was up. As it turned out her appointment was confirmed a mere couple of weeks before things turned bad and the whole deal went ‘tits-up’ – to avail myself of the vernacular. The completed forms and supporting documentation are once again crossing the Atlantic as I write, this time to be put into storage until such time as we are ready to start the process over again.

As it happens this is a good thing, since once permanent residency has been granted there is a time limit for moving to Canada. It would have been most annoying for the application to have succeeded and for us then to find ourselves unable to avail ourselves of it before it expired.

Once again we find ourselves looking on the bright side – which is, of course, a good thing!

It has taken six weeks and has involved a great deal of ferreting out of information, hunting down old photographs, recovering long-lost documents and battling with a sometimes baffling bureaucracy – but, finally, I believe that the job is done and the task is complete. My application for Canadian permanent residency is ready to go!

For the record the package comprises:

• 1 x completed form – IMM 008 – General Application Form for Canada
• 1 x completed form – IMM5669 – Schedule A – Background/Declaration
• 1 x completed form – IMM 5406 – Additional Family Information
• 1 x completed form – IMM 5490 – Sponsored Spouse/Partner Questionnaire

Supporting documentation comprises:

Identity and Civil Status Documents

• 1 x copy of birth certificate
• 1 x copy if driving license
• 1 x copy of marriage certificate
• 1 x copy of previous divorce certificate

Travel Documents and Passports

• 1 x copy of passport

Proof of Relationship to Sponsor

• 11 x copies of photographs of the two of us taken on holidays and at other events over the past 7 years
• 6 x copies of photographs of our wedding and reception in Victoria
• 2 x copies of photographs taken on our honeymoon
• 6 x copies of photographs taken at our wedding blessing ceremony in the UK
• 1 x copy of our wedding invitation
• 1 x copy of our wedding blessing ceremony invitation
• 1 x copy of our wedding ‘thank you’ card
• 1 x copy of a screen-capture showing a small number of the 3000+ emails we have exchanged over the last 7 years
• 3 x copies of flight confirmations for our last three trips between the UK and Canada

Police Certificates and Clearances

• 1 x Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) – Police Certificate

Proof of Medical Examination

• 1 x completed and stamped form IMM 1017 Medical Report – Section A

Photos

• 8 x photographs to the specification in IMM 3901 Sponsorship of a Spouse, Common-law Partner,Conjugal Partner or Dependant Child Living Outside Canada – Part 3 – Country Specific Instruction (Western Europe) – Appendix B: Photo Specifications

Other Documentation

• 1 x completed document checklist from IMM 3901 Sponsorship of a Spouse, Common-law Partner,Conjugal Partner or Dependant Child Living Outside Canada – Part 3 – Country Specific Instruction (Western Europe) – Appendix A: Document Checklist – Immigrant

This bundle will accompany me to Canada when I travel next Friday (hooray!!) and will there we joined to Kickass Canada Girl’s similar agglomeration (see here for details) before – finally – being submitted to Citizenship and Immigration Canada. Then we must wait with fingers, legs, eyes – and everything else – firmly crossed.

And then – I think – we will deserve a drink!

I have spent much of the last two weeks filling out the forms to support my application for Canadian permanent residency. You may ask how it can possibly take such a long time to complete a few forms, and indeed that is a good question. The answer – as hinted at in previous posts on the subject – lies in the fact that I am applying through the family sponsorship route with my spouse as the sponsor. This requires – rightly in my view – a fair amount of supporting evidence.

The process is clearly designed to weed out applications from those engaged in ‘sham’ marriages and focuses extensively on the course of the relationship. Amongst the questions to which I am required to respond are the following:

• Where and how did we meet?
• Was the meeting arranged?
• Were gifts exchanged at the first meeting?
• How did the relationship develop – meetings, dates, trips etc?
• Did our families and friends know about the relationship?
• When did my spouse meet my family and close friends?
• Are we married?
• When and how did we get engaged?
• Where was the wedding and who attended?
• Where did we go on honeymoon?
• Have we been living together – if so where and when?
• If currently not together, have we visited each other since parting?
• How often – by what means and in what language – do we correspond?

There is a fair bit more along these lines and for each answer we are required to provide supporting documentation in the form of photographs, itineraries, letters, emails and so forth.

Somewhat darker is the tenor of such questions as:

• Was there a formal celebration of your engagement? If not – why not? (my emboldening and italics!)
  

I don’t much care for the tone of this but I am certainly not going to take any chances, so I answer cautiously and completely.

Digging out the answers to all of these questions – not to mention the supporting documentation – takes a fair bit of time and effort. Kickass Canada Girl and I have been together for more than 7 years and, for a brain as old as mine, remembering all of the gruesome details takes some doing. I simply didn’t recall when the Girl first met my family! It took a fair bit of detective work – involving ploughing through old emails looking for hints (yes – I have kept all of the Girl’s emails – more than 3000 of them!) and decoding the cryptic cyphers that comprise her diary entries – to come up with a plausible timeline for the events of half a decade ago and more.

It is, however, well worth it for the ultimate prize – and this keeps me nicely focused whenever I get a little grumpy or start to cut up rough!

“Doctor, doctor – gimme the news…”

Robert Palmer

I am now the proud possessor both of an Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) ‘Police Certificate’ and a signed and stamped ‘IMM 1017 Medical Report – Section A’…  these being amongst the numerous forms, appendices and other items that must be submitted in support of my application for Canadian Permanent Residency.

I attended for my medical examination at a clinic at Maidenhead in Berkshire here in the UK last Friday afternoon. I was there for nearly two hours and there was a point at which I thought that I would have to walk away empty handed and start the process again from the top.

The confusion arose because of the plethora of different routes by which application for Permanent Residency can be made. The most common case clearly encompasses those who need or wish to move to Canada to work. In such cases application is made in the home country – the UK in this case – and at the appropriate point in the process Citizenship and Immigration Canada send to the applicant a blank ‘IMM 1017 Medical Report – Section A’ form, with one of the photos that has been submitted with the application affixed to it and bearing the appropriate stamp. The applicant subsequently makes an appointment with a Designated Medical Practitioner and arrives for the medical, form in hand.

The fact that I had turned up bearing a blank form – no photo, no stamp – threw the clinic into a complete tizzy! Now – those applying for residency through a sponsor based in Canada – as I am – have to follow a different route, as outlined in ‘IMM 3901E – Sponsorship of a Spouse, Common-Law Partner, Conjugal Partner or Dependent Child Living Outside Canada – Part 3: Country Specific Instructions’ (for Western Europe). This specifies that all the forms and supporting documentation must be completed and gathered together before being forwarded to the prospective sponsor – in Canada – for submission to Citizenship and Immigration Canada along with the latter’s own application to be a sponsor.

To cut a long story short, after a lengthy search in their records the clinic eventually discovered an email relating to the only previous case that they had had for this form of application, and duly agreed to carry out the medical and to affix the photo and stamp the form themselves.

Hooray!

Having been given the green light it was then full speed ahead. I was subjected to a chest x-ray by the radiologist, to measurement and urine sampling by the nurse, to medical examination and general chit-chat by the doctor (who had been at medical school with the School Doctor at my previous school!) and finally to blood tests by another nurse.

End result? Unless anything untoward shows up in the blood tests (including the extra £60 test that they thought I should have, to add to the £250 I was already paying) then I am fit as a fiddle and possessed of the constitution of an ox!

Well – I could have told them that…

There is quite enough to be done in putting together an application to become a permanent resident of Canada without having to think too much about the hoops through which one’s sponsor has to jump as well. I rather thought I would leave that side of things to the Kickass Canada Girl, who not only relishes a challenge but is also jolly good at this sort of thing.

This doesn’t seem quite fair, however, to those eager readers who are keen to know how the whole process works (huh?!) so I have reconsidered and taken a peek at the document checklist that the sponsor has to fulfil prior to submitting their part of the application.

There are 15 items on the list!

Fortunately they are not all required in every circumstance. Here is a quick run-down of those that I believe the Girl will need to include:

• Completed ‘Application to Sponsor’ form.
• Completed ‘Sponsorship Evaluation’ (my understanding is that – if I had children – she would need submit a ‘Financial Evaluation’ instead).
• A copy of the receipt for the fee.
• Completed ‘Sponsor Questionnaire’
• A photocopy of one of – Permanent Resident Card, Canadian Citizenship Card, Canadian birth certificate, Canadian Passport.
• If previously married or in a common-law relationship, one of – proof of separation, divorce certificate, annulment certificate, death certificate (of former spouse, naturally!), declaration of severance of common-law relationship.
• An original ‘Option C Printout’ of the last ‘Notice of Assessment’ for the most recent tax year (or other acceptable evidence of employment income).
• A letter from her employer stating period of employment, salary and regular hours per week.

That doesn’t seem too onerous and once the Girl has this little lot sorted out she can add to it the considerable pile of documentation that I have to provide. She will then submit the whole shooting match to Citizenship and Immigration Canada and we can sit back and await the outcome.

More on my part in the proceedings next time.

“Citizenship is a tough occupation which obliges the citizen to make his own informed opinion and stand by it.” – Martha Gellhorn

As I noted in a previous post, Kickass Canada Girl is visiting the UK – for a week – at the end of May. This is a particularly pleasant surprise as I had not thought to see her until I travel to BC at the end of June.

She will be here primarily to attend her citizenship ceremony. She applied for British citizenship while she was still working in the UK and this has duly been granted. The ceremony – which apparently entails taking an oath of allegiance and listening to the National Anthem (though possibly not a great deal more) has to be attended within three months of the grant of citizenship, and will thus not wait until she is here again during the summer.

This naturally acts as a wake up call to me – particularly as we are now aiming to bring forward my immigration date to the summer of 2013 – to get started on my application for permanent residency in Canada. The forms and information pack have been acquired and it is time to set things in motion.

The procedure is – quite properly – complex. There are a number of routes by which one can gain resident status:

• Skilled workers or professionals – in one of the 29 listed skilled occupations – each of which is subject to a quota and other restrictions.
• Canadian experience class – one who already has work experience in Canada – again subject to other relevant criteria
• Investors, entrepreneurs and the self employed – subject to the requirement to invest at least $800,000 Canadian, or to own an existing Canadian business.
• Provincial nominees – those nominated by a Canadian province or territory
• Family sponsored – for which one must be sponsored by a Canadian citizen to whom one is related. Again – other criteria also apply.

Those who wish to know more about the process should visit the Citizenship and Immigration Canada website, which is packed with an exhaustive amount of information.

For a variety of reasons – not least my age, which renders me ineligible under the points system that governs skilled worker applications – the only route open to me is family sponsorship. Fortunately (and fortunate in so many ways) I am married to a Canadian Girl – and a kickass one at that!

The process by which a Canadian citizen can sponsor a family member is also, inevitably, complex and time consuming. There are two main components to the process:

• The Canadian citizen must apply to be a sponsor for the family member.
• Once approved the family member must apply for permanent residency.

Both applications must be submitted together, through the sponsor. It is still possible to apply if either the sponsor or the relation – or both (or niether!) – lives outside Canada.

Hmmm!

To avoid this treatise becoming just too perplexing I think I will leave the next chapter for a further posting. This will give your brain – and mine – a chance to recuperate.