Canadian Permanent Residence: It’s Official!

This is the blog post that I’ve been waiting 14 months to write. I can finally let you all know that we are officially now Permanent Residents of Canada! The video below is a little something that my creatively talented other half put together to celebrate the occasion. The first part is the sentimental 60-second history of our two years in Canada, and the second part is what actually happened on the day. Enjoy…

The letter arrived in the mail last Friday, about two weeks after our  online application status changed from ‘Application Received’ to ‘Decision Made’. They wouldn’t tell me what the decision was, just that it would be sent to me in writing. I was terrified to open the brown envelope with the big Citizenship & Immigration Canada stamp on it, but after double checking that no fees had been refunded onto my credit card I summoned up the courage. It was good news! We were so excited to have the official paperwork in our hands, and made plans to head to the border the next day to make it all official.

The good news letter!

The process for ‘activating’ Permanent Residency is very similar to that of ‘activating’ a new working holiday visa, in that you can only do it coming into Canada from outside the country. Luckily we were practised at the phenomenon known as flagpoling from our 2012 working holiday visa experience. It was still more than a little disconcerting to be handed the whole ‘Refusal from the Unites States’ form, but there was very little waiting involved and we were back in the line for Canada within 30 minutes.

Eeeeeeeeeeeeek!

We weren’t so lucky on this side, and spent 45 minutes crawling slowly up to the attendant before being directed to the Canadian Immigration Office. We were seen very quickly, and asked to sit and wait while the Officer went through our paperwork. We were called up to the counter individually to confirm that we haven’t committed any crimes in Canada and that we don’t have any other dependents, and then the moment of glory arrived! Our friendly and welcoming Officer (really he was, it was nice guy day at the border on both sides, what a relief!) welcomed us to Canada and handed us our passports, an information sheet about Permanent Residency and two miniature paper Canadian flags. Yes, flags! I immediately started waving them around in excitement and we went outside to take the obligatory celebration photos and video footage.

Thank you to @ZipcarVancouver for the wheels!

Our Permanent Resident  cards will arrive in the mail in 6-8 weeks, though in the meantime we have a ‘Confirmation of Permanent Residence’ stapled into our passport. This is our proof of Permanent Resident status should we want to do resident-type things like apply for a permanent SIN number or enroll in an educational program. Being a Permanent Resident means that we still can’t vote and we’re not eligible for a Canadian passport, but we’ll be apply for both of these things when we become eligible for Citizenship in three years. Until then, we’ll be mostly found basking in the glory of no more paperwork, visa applications or permit fees. It’s a pretty fun place to be.

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Application Timeline

• Applied to Province for PNP Nomination – February 2012
• Received certificate of nomination from Province – April 2012
• Sent certificate of nomination and other PR papers to CIC – July 2012
• Had forms returned for missing a signature – August 2012
• Re-sent PR papers to CIC – September 2012
• Received request for a medical examination – November 2012
• Received request for passport photos and final information – February 2013
• Received official confirmation of Permanent Residence – April 2013

A Trip Around the Flagpole: Activating my second year visa

This post is now featured as a guest post with Moving2Canada: http://www.moving2canada.com/planning/activate-your-canadian-work-permit/

Thank you for reading!