Were you able to go to the company without any letter from IRCC and ask them to perform the check?
I'm curious to learn more about the process because I will be applying (outland) soon, but I will be in Canada a few times. I'm wondering if I could walk in to this company and get the fingerprint-based check in advance of submitting the application, to have the certificate on hand in case it is requested. I lived in Canada for 6 years, so I'm assuming that I will need something.
Note, I've also asked elsewhere in this forum whether a Toronto Police certificate (requested online) would be sufficient. I do already have this process started and was not done based on fingerprints.
Thanks.
Yes, we paid $125, I believe. We did not have the request letter at that time. The reason we did it in advance before they sent the request was because my partner went to work on a project at a remote mining facility where he would not be able to access the police station to get his fingerprints taken. We knew he should be getting a request because he lived in Canada for a year.
Anyone living in Canada for over 6 months continuously should get the request for a finger report from the RCMP as they do a search through their database based on the fingerprints, so a police report from a police station without the fingerprints is not sufficient. My partner also had one ordered from the local police station using just the name search but we couldn't use it.
You do not need a letter of request to get this done, so it can be done beforehand and when you get the request, then you can send it in right away. They will give you 120 days to submit this. Bad thing is, I heard they won't finalize your app until after the 120 days has passed. Someone correct me if I am wrong about this, but I think I read it somewhere on this forum that this was the case.
If the applicant is in Canada (say visiting) , it is possible for him/her to go to a RCMP detachment to get the fingerprints scanned in directly on their machine. However if the applicant is out of country, he/she will have to find a place that can do the paper fingerprints. This varies with the country the applicant is in.