Canada - British Expat Forum

Under my wifes part of the application it says "decision made", hence we recieved the letter stating the application is in london (6th july), however under my part it says "not available". I would have thought that they would have written "application received" or something similar.


Andy that does seem like a while to wait but I have heard that if you need to submit more documents it delays the application. but 12 weeks is still within their application processing times. Please keep us updated, hopefully you'll hear something soon.

James

Hi James,

It was our immigration advisor who said additional paperwork requests don't delay but I don't know where he got the info from so you never know who to believe.

My wife is Canadian, her bit says 'decision made' and my bit says 'in process'.

Our advisor says we've put 'a chaser' on it whatever that means, not sure if there is even such a thing but it's worth a try anyway.

Keep in touch!

Andy

Hopefully your advisor will help speed things up for you. I will keep you updated on my status as soon as I hear anything new.

Its quite frustrating that you cant contact them by phone as when i was in canada a few weeks ago my wife called up cpc missisagua and were very helpful and told her everything she wanted to know!

Under your status, did it say "in process" from the start or did you have the "not available" to begin with? Ive had the "not available" from the 6th of July

We didn't check it for the first month or so because I didn't get the tracking number for a while (which is good in a way because I check it every day so it saved me a few weeks stress!)

So I've never seen it saying not available sorry.

Just a quick update on my application. Checked the website today (as i do everyday!) and my status has changed to IN PROCESS as of the 20th of July. Hopefully they don’t need anything else from me. Andy, any change in your situation??

Well, there's no change in the status but we've had quite a calamity. They asked for an up to date police clearance certificate on June 1st and we had 60 days to get it to them (31st July). I sent it via first class post rather than recorded (stupid!) and just assumed they had it and we'd have our visa even before that time was up.

We've been trying to confirm with them that they received the document but because they don't seem to ever respond to questions, we've asked for another copy of the police certificate for £10 and it's been sent today guaranteed to arrive tomorrow.

So it's back to sitting and waiting. I saw on the processing time page that only 50% get approved within 3 months. 3 months for us is this Friday and only 70% get approved within 6 months. So we might still have a while to wait. If they update the website on Tuesday's then we usually keep checking it throughout the day because it could be any time they do it I suppose.

All the best, glad to here yours says in process now!

Hey James!

Our visa has just been approved! So they received our application in London on April 29th and it's been approved on August 3rd. We got an E-mail saying that we have 45 days to send in my passport and 2 passport photos of myself and I have to fill a form out. It says that because my wife can travel on her Canadian passport we don't have to send any photos of her or her passport or anything. We're sending it by courier but you have the option of taking it in person to the London consulate but it can only be on a Thursday between 2pm and 3pm and can be collected exactly 2 weeks later.

So we're hoping that mailing it to them is only going to take 2 weeks or less to do. Someone else could collect it on our behalf if you give them the receipt, write them a signed letter authorising them and tell them to take their passport or driver's licence with them.

So I'll let you know when we get it back.

(A very happy) Andy =D

Congratulations Andy....hope all goes well for you!
Steve

Thanks Steve! We've decided to take it in now because the letter says to allow 6 weeks to get it back if you send by courier.

Andy

Hi all,

This is a bit of a small thing but it's the little details that count I suppose! I've just filled out my form for sending off the passport to get my visa stamped. On the instructions it specifically says NOT to use a ballpoint pen when writing your case number and name on the back of your passport photos. I'm not sure why, maybe because it doesn't work so well.

Anyway, I tried using a gel pen but the ink doesn't dry even after a couple of hours you can still rub it off. I found the best way was to use one of those thin permanent markers that you write on CD's with.

Andy

Got my passport back woohoo! I posted it off on 5th August and it arrived 18th August. They've put a sticker on one of the pages which is the visa and gave me a landing document which I will have to sign in front of the officers at the border and have an interview etc. It came with a 4 page document printout with advice of what to do before you leave and when you get there etc. So we'll be off in a few weeks, good luck to everyone else =D

Of the few people who have replied to this post and of course Andy could I ask a couple of questions

I am a brit looking to marry my Canadian other half withing the next 12 months.

Did you get married in Canada or the UK?
Did you start the applications as soon as you were married?
Did you submit your own applications or do them through an agent?

I have downloaded all the forms and starting to compile the information that will be required.

Hey Shaun,

I might not be the best person to answer because I wasn't allowed into Canada when I was engaged. This was because I had only recently been in Canada for 6 months on a holiday visa so 3 weeks later when I tried to go back, they wouldn't let me in until I had got my spouse visa because they thought I would try to work without a work permit to support myself (even though I was living somewhere for free and had enough money for the 2 months I was trying to stay for with a return ticket.)

So we got married in UK and had another ceremony in US just over the border because by then we were already legally married. We got married in Sept 09 and started the application in Jan 2010 because it took a long time to collect all our evidence, photos, letters etc. We landed in Canada with my visa Sept 2010 even though every time they asked for anything we did it immediately and via the fastest post possible.

We also used an immigration advisor, not a lawyer to fill out all our paperwork and act on our behalf. He did it perfectly and knew people to contact to chase things but I'm sure we could've found that out ourselves. It's Nov 15th now and I'm still waiting for my permanent residency card to arrive to my house (in BC).

Andy