The Big Question was the expiration date of the visa - how much time we'd have until we had to move (first mentioned here). We had a possible answer, but also learned that it varies at different times and for different countries of origin. We figured it wouldn't be less than six months, but we never really knew.
Now this question, once so central to our plans, has been made moot (mootified?) by our great fortune at finding a place to live so quickly. Who would have thought we'd have a house before our passports came back in the mail? Amazing!
Here's that timeline again, including one future date.
March 22, 2004 - applications submitted for first time
April 3 & 23 - corrected applications resubmitted
June 3 - applications declared correct and placed in queue
Jan 18, 2005 - initial assessment complete, request for additional documents
Feb 1 - medical exams done
March 21 - FBI clearances received*
March 23 - second round of documents sent to CIC
May 11 - applications are complete [WE'RE IN!!]; request for passports
June 4 - passports returned with visas; we now have permanent resident status
August 30, 2005 - we move to Canada. For real.
I'm happy, stunned, nervous, impatient, thrilled, anxious, sad, overwhelmed and completely under control.
* This has changed, CIC now asks for FBI certificate with initial application.
24 comments:
Greetings from Toronto! I came across your fascinating blog this morning and have been reading bits and pieces for an hour. I'm happy to join in welcoming you to the area. (And I see you're moving here on my birthday -- an auspicious day, to be sure.) There are a lot of earlier posts I wish I could respond to ... you can get the Sunday NY Times here, y'know, and we do have a Flatiron building of our own (older than the New York one), and thanks for your good wishes re: open adoption records ... and ... and ... well, anyway, enjoy your summer in New York and I hope you'll be very happy up here with us.
Cool. I hope everything goes smoothly.
Thanks Fish!
Thank you Marnie, and welcome to wmtc! Wow, this blog is "fascinating", how cool. (Compliment my writing, I am instantly your friend.)
A few other Trontonians have told me I can get the Sunday NY Times. That's cool. As for the buildings, well, it's not one building or another, or their relative ages. Toronto seems to lack great architecture. Visually, its an uninspiring city.
But all places cannot be all things. I don't want to live in the US anymore, so I can't take NYC with me. I know I'm going to enjoy Toronto, and that's what counts.
Thank you so much for your good wishes. Please feel free to respond to any old posts if you feel like it!
yes! welcome!
Very, very, very cool :-)
congrats on getting your immigation stuff completed. i did mine from inside canada and trying to read more of your blog to figure out your situation. my application for me and my daughter took 14months....from oct 2003 to dec 2004...what a great christmas present to get my permanent residency. had been in canada since aug 2002.
best of luck on your move. i will be continuing to check out your blog.
hugs
Thanks, you guys!
CaliGirl, I'm interested in how you were able to live in Canada before your immigration stuff was completed. If you can't post about it publicly, perhaps you will email me.
We found we couldn't work or be eligible for health care without the PR card, so we had to stay put until that came through.
Where do you live? Are you originally from California?
Congrats on getting through all the paper work! We had grief until a few days before we left! I cannot imagine ever living in the USA again I really do love living abroad.
Thanks, Blackpurl! Where do you live?
We may still have complications with paperwork, who knows. And who knows what other complications lie ahead. But that's life...
Have you seen Cinderella Man?
Looks like there is a Canada related controversy.
What do you think?
I am not sure if the subsidies are illegal as the writer says.
Oh, BTW. Congrats :)
Thanks David!
Not my kind of movie - and I pretty much only see movies at home on DVD.
But tons of movies are made in Toronto. Toronto is used as a stand-in for New York all the time. Canada makes it easier for the industry, New York is notorious for making it incredibly difficult. (Though that's gotten better in the last several years.)
There's nothing illegal or untoward about this. If you like capitalism and free markets, you would approve.
The website is about protectionism. The film industry isn't going to operate that way.
Hey L and redsock,
Congratulations! Woo hoo! Yay for you!
"Toronto seems to lack great architecture. Visually, its an uninspiring city. "
It's mostly because Toronto only became "downtown Canada" in the late '60s. Before that, Toronto was a notoriously boring and stuffy place. Toronto is only now coming of age, unlike New York which has been a fixture for the past couple of centuries. The neat buildings are coming in the near future, sort of like this thing.
http://www.emporis.com/en/wm/bu/?id=171040
Cool! There's hope. :-)
Hi, Laura, belated congrats on the visas! All I can say is, I hope Canada's not a disappointment... or too big a disappointment. A move as complicated and expensive as this must come with some pretty big expectations. Still, I would imagine your investigations convinced you it was worth doing or you wouldn't have gone to all this trouble. Ah, well, you know Canadians. So sensitive, so worried about being found wanting... :)
Kyle's right. Toronto was notoriously blue until very, very recently. There were referenda here in the 1940s as to whether people should be allowed, on Sundays, to go to movie theatres, play sports, or even unlock the playground equipment (I'm not joking). The Orange Order of Northern Ireland fame pretty much ran Ontario and Toronto until the 1950s, all but proclaiming the personage of the province's premier and the city's mayor. Around the time of the First World War, Toronto was commonly nicknamed "The Belfast of America", so ascendant was Protestantism here. Aside from a few Italians and Poles, the ethnic character of Toronto was remarkably WASP right up until the federal government threw out racial quotas for immigration in the 1960s and changed the character of the city and the country for good and forever. From what I've seen of old CBC man-on-the-street interviews, Toronto much before 1970 seemed like the Victorian holdover of a large city in the US Midwest.
To some extent, it still is. :) But at least not exclusively so.
Kyle: speaking of new buildings in Toronto... have you seen this awful thing? I've been to the ROM and seen the skeleton of it... at the moment, it looks like something that collapsed and killed people...
http://www.beijing.gc.ca/beijing/en/1627.htm
I like that building! Very cool.
The move comes with expectations, as most things do. But we know enough about Canada and Toronto that our expectations are realistic.
I am very anxious to leave the US, and I think I know what I'm getting into. Of course there'll be surprises, but what would life be without surprises.
As always in my life, I'm open to discovering what happens next. I'm excited about so much new ground to explore.
Thanks for the congrats!
Moving the end of August? You'll be arriving just in time for the really pleasant tail end of the summer, when the humidity's dying down. Just remember that the following Monday is "Labour" Day! ;)
I have read your "the timeline is complete" many, many times. Somehow gives me a sense of what is like to achieve this incredible journey. That for some is just a simpler matter of just changing addresses. For others is a bigger matter, like me. I was deported from the US 3 months ago and I've been living separate from my partner. After 5 years of being together and tried every possible way to fix my status in the US nothing worked. We now are waiting for our residency to then move to Canada, we hope to move there soon. Thanks for sharing this, it really gives hope to others.
Thank you so much for telling me this. If something I wrote gave you hope, I have a purpose.
I wish you and your partner the best of luck. I hope you can be reunited north of the border.
Hi there, well Toronto is one paradigm shift. I am proud American who washed up in Toronto in 1992. I have since been back and forth, but now I live in Montreal. These years have made me more at home, but I will always be the American...listening to anything from envy of the rich southern neighbor to the more usual lefty-pinky holier than thou tirade. No Canada isn't paradise but at least Toronto has sort of a rich glow and mindset about it that is almost American, but nicer. If you want edge the city that time and money forgot is Montreal. The once regal lady is now the dour penniless frump, but a frump with accent. But to come here is at least another culture shock. And if I had known I would have taken French in high school.
Bon voyage toi! For your journey up I suggest the song "Rocks and trees" by a now forgotten Canadian balladeer commenting the crucial geographic features.
I am proud American who washed up in Toronto in 1992.
By accident?
lefty-pinky holier than thou tirade
Not sure what this means. I'm pretty lefty-pinko (pinky?) myself. I'm also not a proud American. I'm an ashamed American.
I love Montreal, but Toronto seems like a better fit, for jobs, baseball and non-French-speaking folks like us.
Your comment is pretty cryptic, but if you want to fill us in, feel free.
I am greatly surprised that it took well over a year to complete the process. I thought that the US and Canada would have lots of reciprocal arrangements that would make it relatively easily for the citizens of one country to move to the other, the way things are between Australia and New Zealand.
And this is the era of 'globalization'. LOL.
I am greatly surprised that it took well over a year to complete the process. I thought that the US and Canada would have lots of reciprocal arrangements that would make it relatively easily for the citizens of one country to move to the other, the way things are between Australia and New Zealand.
And this is the era of 'globalization'. LOL.
I believe that Canada doesn't want to show a preference for immigrants from any country over another. The process is the same no matter where you come from.
Considering so many Americans feel they are special and should jump the queue wherever they are simply because they are from the US, I think it's refreshing. In Canada, I am just another immigrant.
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