Hi there,
I went to an information session about living and working in Canada yesterday. It was organised by the International Job Center in Brussels and given by a visa specialist from VO Paris, France. Although most of it was already known to people of this forum, I managed to confirm one bit of information and learned something new, both of which I want to share with you.
I'm afraid it will only make the few of us who are FSW2 here happy but of course I wish our FSW1 friends all the best.
1. The visa specialist confirmed that, once the applications reach VO,
FSW2 are treated with higher priority then FSW1.
2. Also, and this is new to me but maybe not to the forum, FSW2 can apply for a Temporary Work Permit while waiting for news on their Permanent Residency. Apparently, a TWP only takes an average of 7 weeks to obtain. Medicals for the PR can be taken in Canada. Of course, there is some risk to this as there is the odd chance you get refused because of your (family's) medicals and you are left with only your one year TWP... Also, what I don't know is whether your file is then transferred to Buffalo, since they treat all applicants that are already in Canada. This could of course cause additional delay but as I said, I am not sure of this (there were a lot of people and I wasn't the only one asking questions
)
Since there aren't too many FSW, us being treated in priority shouldn't cause too much of a delay for our FSW1 friends.
Keep up the good work on the forum, soon we'll reach 1000 pages!!
Cheers, Kris