Waggle

Yes. Also we have trip to Canada booked for 27th August, approx 8 weeks away, so we would be cutting it very fine for getting passports back if we posted them. They take about 6 weeks on average that way, but could be longer!

To have the actual visas 1 month before we go over to Canada is a nice continguency bracket!

Wayne.

engineer80

Yaaaaaaayyyyyyy! I have been madly stalking you, waiting for this news! Many congrats and enjoy!

matt_t

Hi Waggle

Congrats on your PPR. I've recently completed my medical and sent off RPRF i'm hoping to get my PPR in a similar time frame to yours. Did you get your RPRF request at the same time as your medical request? I only applied in March so i've been one of the lucky ones it seems too.

I'm also planning another 3 weeks trip on 20th August. I'm just wondering what the PPR email is and why they even need my passport - they already have the photocopy. Will they give you a permanent resident card or do we have to wait until we get to Canada for that?

Waggles wife

They need the passport to put the visa stamp in it, when you land in Canada they use the visa to confirm your application and activate your PR status. they produce the PR cards adn dend them to your candain address about 2-3 months after landing

Waggle

Hi - March applicant getting med requests, that's a very fast timeframe!
Are you FSW cat 1?

As my wife says, you don't get PR cards until you land in Canada to validate the visa.

They stick a sticker in the back of your passport and give you some other documents such as COPR (Confirmation of Permanent Residence). You then present these at POE (Point of Entry) when you land as well as providing proof of funds if they ask, and also a goods to follow list stating which items you will be bringing into Canada with you. You need at this stage to give a Canadian address for the PR cards.

Then will then mail the PR cards to that address which takes a month or two.

Wayne.

tracys

Congrats Waggle, fantastic news!

Elen1981

Hi there!

Congrats

I just have a quick question- when you say, 'You need at this stage to give a Canadian address for the PR cards' at POE, do you know if is this a necessity? What if you want to look around and secure somewhere to live once you get to Canada? Is it possible to forward an address after a few weeks for example?

Waggle

I think you have to give an address, however this can be a temporary address if you don't have anywhere permanent yet (the name of a hotel and there are lists of places I think you can use for temporary address).

Bottom line is they will be producing your PR after you have activated your visa and they will only mail this to an address inside of Canada.

Wayne.

matt_t

Thanks for the info Waggle and Waggle's wife. I am a cat B FSW. I noticed that your NOC category is now full, unlike mine (industrial electrician).

Did they give you a strict time frame on when you have to send your passport for PPR?

Waggles wife

45 days from reciept of email

Waggle

Yes 45 days. There are basically 4 options
1) Post them by courier
2) Post them by normal mail
3) Drop them in their drop-box
4) Deliver them In Person

With the first 3 options they say around 6 weeks to get the passports back. I have heard people getting them in a month, but also it taking 8 weeks or more - so you take your chances on the timescales! Note that dropping them in their drop-box is NOT the same as going "In Person" - it just saves a day of postage and I guess the reliability factor that it got there.

To go in person you have to be there between 2pm and 3pm on a Thursday, and you queue up outside - they let you in, take the docs, give you a raffle ticket and then you go back 2 weeks later to collect the visas.

So option 4) is the fastest - but I guess the most expensive depending on the costs for you to get to London twice, and the associated time off work.

For us, we actually have a trip to Vancouver booked for 27th August, and so we couldn't really risk options 1) to 3) and not getting the passports back in time. So we're going in person next Thursday (7th July) and will, all being well, collect them 2 weeks later on 21st July.


Now, if only the housing market wasn't so dire we might be able to sell our house without losing £20,000 on what we paid for it!.....

Wayne.

CANADIAN CARPERS

We lost 40k on our house sale. I think the only positive thing about the 14 months we have been waiting since AOR is that the shitty exchange rate at present would have prevented us from buying in Canada anyway.

Waggle

We have no intention of buying in Canada for several years, but want to try to salvage some of our house equity if we can.

Annoyingly we could have sold our house for £140k to £145k last year, but wanted to wait a year until we were out of our fixed rate period to avoid the £5k redemption penalty.

Now it's looking like we'll be lucky to get £130k for it! Since we've been overpaying the mortgage we'd still be in positive equity selling at that price, or even at £125k - but we'll be losing a lot of money doing it.

Still I guess we have to weigh that up against the massive hassle of remotely renting out the house in the UK whilst we are in Canada.

Wayne.

Waggles wife

Unfortunately we are not in Canada so the exchange rate is working against us too! We are not planning to buy for a while so it won't matter too much but it is not great.

Waggle

Yeah we're planning on probably only transferring the bare minimum of funds for a while until the exchange rate improves.

For proof of funds at point of entry when we complete record of landing, are bank statements from a UK bank acceptable? We don't really want to transfer it all into Canadian dollars at this stage unless the exchange rate improves.

Wayne.