Hi Guys! Just want to share a brief and sweet landing experience my wife and I had last Aug 7, 2011.
We flew via British Airways from Dubai-Heathrow-Toronto. The flight was very tiring. Our flight from Heathrow was delayed for almost an hour for some reason. We were just sitting in the plane waiting. When we arrived in Pearson airport everything was smooth and easy. There is a guy sitting next to the trolley area where you can exchange some bills to coins if you want the trolley. We needed two trolleys as we have a total of 9 bags with us
After that we went straight to immigration. From there we were asked if it's our first time here in Canada and what do we intend to do. We said that we're doing our first landing as immigrant. After that, the IO welcomed us and refer us to another IO where we showed our landing papers. We were asked here how much money we have as per our declaration in the embarkation card we filled upon landing. The officer was very nice. After he finished writing some stuff in our landing paper he then referred us to the customs area. But before we got there, there are a couple of Canadians that stopped us to give us several pamphlets and brochures. They said that these would help us settle in here easily. After that we went straight to the customs area where we were ask again about our POF. I told the officer that we carried some cash and some DD. i told him if he wanted to see them but he declined. He just asked me to bring our the two DD's i have. He then copied some details of my DD's in a form that he kept for himself. Note that my wife and didn't have any goods to follow so in turn, the officer didn't bother looking at my goods list with me including the photos of our jewelries. The officer told me that we don't need to leave any copy of our goods list as we have them all with us now. We only need to leave a copy if we have goods to follow After that we went out and find our relative waiting for us patiently as we our delayed for more than 2 hours. The next day, we went out to get our SIN numbers. Again it was very smooth and fast. We're planning to get our OHIP and bank accounts today but unfortunately it is raining so my wife and I decided to stay at home for now to rest.
Now my next step is to look for job and hoping that i can land a job soon. I'm eying to join the same company were i used to work in Dubai. Hopefully they'll entertain me. In the meantime, we'll be enjoying our rest!
Thanks for all the help I got from this forum. Even though don't post as much. Just by reading several posts from other people here really helped a lot and answered my questions. So to all the people who frequent here, i salute you and continue your genuine support to people like us who really benefited from your great help. Again, pleas accept my sincerest gratitude! God bless you all and good luck to the rest of the people here waiting for their visas!
mike