anglogerman

Just thought I would share in case it helps anyone out there.

My husband and I lodged an outland family class application in October 2014, he was approved as a sponsor earlier this year and our case is now being processed in London. After I had to withdraw my autistic son from school as they were no longer able to cope with him, we decided to fly over and wait out the rest of the procedure here (Toronto).

We flew from Munich to Toronto on 24 April, and ironically, the only headache we had was at German passport control. My ex-husband had signed a letter stating that he consented to me removing our son from the country and emigrating with him to Canada, but it wasn't enough for the passport official (even though the government child welfare authorities had assured me it would be!). So we had the intense embarrassment of having to stand to one side (just great with an autistic kid who absolutely loathes being looked at) and wait while some guy in the bowels of the airport phoned my ex-husband to make sure this was true. The moral of this story is: DO get any such letter notarised!!

On arrival in Toronto, there were no problems whatsoever. I presented the form you have to fill out on the plane to the passport official, who asked us why we were in Canada and how long we expected to stay. On explaining that we were here with dual intent, he made a few notes on the card and sent us off to a side room where we had to stand in line behind three other people. We only had to wait a few minutes, then had a nice friendly chat with an immigration official, who asked to see our passports and my husband's sponsorship approval letter, which he checked against computer records. I had all kinds of other documents ready to wave under his nose, but that was all he wanted to see! He then stamped our passports for 6 months and off we went to collect our luggage. We passed quickly through customs, they didn't ask us to open our suitcases or anything, I was quite flabbergasted actually

Since then, things have progressed very smoothly and most of our worries have evaporated into thin air. We were not 100% sure whether my son would be able to to attend public school as a visitor (I was preparing to homeschool him if necessary), but all we needed to do was obtain a letter of admission from Toronto District School Board, which was a breeze: all we needed was 2 proofs of address (lease and utility bill), our passports, our marriage certificate, and our sponsorship approval letter with receipt of fee payment. My son has now been registered to start grade 9 in September, and the high school a few minutes' walk from our home in Don Mills actually has an autism program which he is being fast-tracked onto. They couldn't be more helpful.

Opening a bank account was also a doddle: Originally I was going to be added to my husband's President's Choice account, but they advised me to open a separate account to start building my own credit history. They even gave me a Mastercard! as a visitor!! (admittedly that is probably because I still have an income of my own from Germany even though I cannot yet officially work here). For that all I had to present was my passport and some other form of ID: either a driver's license (which I don't have) or a Service Ontario ID card (which I got for a mere 30 dollars).

Thanks for wading through this essay; hopefully it will be an encouragement to someone

Princesstigger

That's great that things seem to have worked out for you so far. Must be such a relief with the school situation especially. It's nice to read of good experiences, thank you for taking the time to share

SchnookoLoly

Super useful, thanks for sharing! I am going to add this to the wiki.

mogscat

This is really interesting. We are researching dual intent and how it affects school. Is your experience in being permitted to join school while a 'visitor' usual, do you know? Did you get the letter of admission from the School Board after arriving in Toronto?

Snowy560

Your post is a really nice story which I enjoyed reading!

As for attending school (as a minor) I think this is okay where one parent is a CC or PR (as in this thread) or one parent is permited to work/study in Canada. Otherwise a study permit is needed:

Can a minor child go to school in Canada without a study permit?


S