+ Decided to flagpole at Niagara Rainbow Bridge +
Sharing my successful flagpoling experience at Niagara Falls yesterday with my wife.
I was contemplating between Niagara and 1000 island and decided that Niagara Rainbow Bridge would be my best option since I do not have a car.
I was very nervous about doing it at Niagara base on several negative feedbacks here in the forum. One of my classmates at University informed me that he did his at Niagara without any hassle so I decided to do the same and just be positive about it.
I and my wife were at the pedestrian crossing at 6 AM and there was already one family of 5 and 2 other guys applying for work permits who were waiting since 4 AM. Luckily for us, its winter since the Canadian border patrol officer informed us that if it was the summer time there would already be a big line from 2 AM.
Make sure to bring $1 CAD coin to be able to cross the border.
We cross the border and upon arriving on the US side we informed the officer that we were flagpoling. He told us to be safe and hope we don't get frostbites returning to the Canadian border since he knew that we would be waiting at the other side until 8 AM when they start processing flagpolers. The American officer was friendly, processed our flagpoling and gave us a white paper to show the Canadian side. It took only 5 minutes on the American side and off we went back to the Canadian side.
We waited until 7:50 AM, when one of the border patrol officers came out and started counting heads. He asked for each flagpolers purpose and told everyone that they only have limited slots for the day. He asked each person to go see his colleague inside to get the yellow paper for flagpoling and we were asked to proceed inside the immigration building across the street.
Once inside the immigration building, mostly all flagpolers were shivering from waiting in the cold weather, everyone could hardly speak and answer immigration questions LOL.
We were fourth to be processed but it took 1 hour before we were called. The two work permit applicants in front of us took a while since the officers had so many questions for them regarding their documentation.
Luckily for us, when our names were called it only took about 10 minutes and finally, we heard the officer say "Welcome to Canada, congratulation on becoming PR" and informed us that we will receive PR cards within 2 to 4 weeks and to make sure to update SIN, healthcard, etc.
All in all, it was a great experience, besides the waiting in the cold. As long as you are willing to be at the border early and have all possible documents ready all will be smooth.
To link PR Card application to online IRCC Account follow this link:
https://www.canadavisa.com/canada-immigration-discussion-board/threads/linking-pr-card-application-to-track-pr-card-after-landing-flagpole-landing-interview-is-complete.617040/
Good luck to all future flagpolers! I hope your experience will be as smooth as ours! Always attract positiveness!