My landing experience on Saturday April 18, 2015 - Rainbow bridge, Niagara Falls, Ontario
Just thought to share my Niagara Falls landing experience with you folks as you might be planning to do the same. We parked our car in old casino parking for $5/day and walked on the bridge since the weather was super nice and you get the chance to take some pictures on the bridge from the border line/flags and stuff! you need $0.5 each as the toll fee to be able to get on the bridge (the machines take quarters only). The bridge is right behind the old casino in case you don't want to park your car far from it!
It's 5 mins walk to reach to the US border offices, The guys on the US side were super nice and told us they already know we are there for landing because they had 6 other landing cases before us! (we tried to be there as early as we could to save the line-up time, that's why they sort of knew why we were there!)
My friend was from one of the "certain countries" so they asked her bunch of questions and took her finger prints and picture. Mine was pretty smooth. Overall it took 10-15 mins for us to complete the refusal process as neither of us had US visa!
My questions to the US border officer were:
1. Does this refusal have any negative impact on our future visa applications for US? His answer: "absolutely not", because you didn't apply for visa and you don't intend to enter into US, You are here just to complete your Canadian landing process.
2. When applying for US visa in future, There is a question in the form asking if you have ever been refused to enter into US, Should I say yes or no to that question? his answer: you should say "YES" and in the comment section you need to write "Refused on xx/xx/xxxx due to not having US visa/Completing the Canadian Landing process.
After receiving the hand-written refusal letters, we headed back to Canada from the same side of bridge and entered the Canada immigration office on the other end. The Canadian guy surprisingly were not that friendly! I guess they were tired of having a busy day since they had 5/6 other guys before us and it was just 9 am! They took all the documents [listed below] and asked for the address in Canada they need to mail the PR card. He told us we can change our sin numbers now, That was it!
Documents for US side: Passport only [with PR visa printed on them]
Documents for Canada side: Passport, COPR letters [two copies one with picture], Bank Statement
Good luck everyone!