The support letters were not part of my 10 pages. I gave the letters separately as their own section. Just make sure, but when we applied the 10 pages was only proof of communication between applicant and sponsor. The letters from your friends and families are not part of the 10 page limit. Not as far as I know, at least.
How We Compiled Our Spousal Sponsorship Application - 2018
- Thread starter ruanp28
- Start date
Oh, the letters that I mentioned were letters that we sent to each other. Also, do you think it's okay to send some pictures as well as part of the relationship being recognized by friends and family? I'm planning to paste some photos of us with our friends and family on a paper and also pasted some screenshots from facebook of our friends congratulating us for our wedding.
Hi all!
Very interesting thread here, thanks for the valuable information! We are also busy with our application here, boy oh boy that's a lot of work!
I'm afraid I missed the part where they said there is a 10 pages limit, is it a general rule for every set of documents or a specific requirement for the proof of communication? I've reviewed the Checklist again and I can't find any info in that...
Thanks for your help!!
Very interesting thread here, thanks for the valuable information! We are also busy with our application here, boy oh boy that's a lot of work!
I'm afraid I missed the part where they said there is a 10 pages limit, is it a general rule for every set of documents or a specific requirement for the proof of communication? I've reviewed the Checklist again and I can't find any info in that...
Thanks for your help!!
you can find it on page 8 of the checklist.Hi all!
Very interesting thread here, thanks for the valuable information! We are also busy with our application here, boy oh boy that's a lot of work!
I'm afraid I missed the part where they said there is a 10 pages limit, is it a general rule for every set of documents or a specific requirement for the proof of communication? I've reviewed the Checklist again and I can't find any info in that...
Thanks for your help!!
Ohh great! Thanks a lot. I assumed this limit was only for the Proof of Contact (spouses not living together). Since it doesn't apply to us I just ignored that part ... :/
I'm sorry but I think that this kind of application is not a good idea. Sending in an almost 2 kg envelope of over 100 pages is wrong on many levels:Hi all, so we finally sent in our application (outland from South Africa) this morning. I thought I might share how we compiled our application, since so many rules have changed over the years and we could not find any new organizing/compiling examples... I am going to try to add photos (hopefuly they upload) and am also outlinging our headings etc. for you.
Some background regarding our application:
(i) We are a common-law couple living together since 2012 and are both outside of Canada
(ii) We do not have any children
(iii) We are not moving to Quebec, so our checklist did not include any Quebec requirements
After the application was compiled, it weighed around 1.7 kilograms. I bubble wrapped the whole application and put a heading on top of the bubble wrap that simply reads "Application for Permanent Residency" with the sponsor's name and the applicant's name.
I had binder clips that held together 3 parts of the application:
The first part I clipped together was number 1-5 below (basically all the checklists, barcodes, payment and IMM forms).
The second part I clipped together was all the supporting documents for the sponsor, including passport, proof of intent to move to Canada (over 100 pages of proof) and source of income proof (basically lots of evidence that we are employable and have money to get onto our feet, degrees, resumes, employment opportunities, savings etc.)
The third part I clipped together was all the supporting documents for the applicant. This includes 2 PR photos that I attached at the top in a small envelope for the officer to see. In this part I also had 100 pages of our relationship proof (since we are a common-law couple, I had to include a ton of bills indicating more than one year of the same address). At the back, I placed 20 photos into an A4 envelope, each photo had details on the back that we printed out neatly and applied to the back of each photo with "DC Fix".
Throughout the supporting documents, we also had headers for each page in case a page got lost some how. The header included both the sponsor and applicant names and birth dates, as well as the type of supporting document (i.e Supporting document for Sponsor: 2. Proof that Sponsor will live in Canada)
Our application's order was exactly as follows:
1. Checklist
2. Barcodes (1344 one page, 0008 two pages)
* I also added a one page cover letter after the bar codes, explaining what class we are applying under, why we believe that we are eligible and a short explanation of evidence that we provided. Its not necessary, but meh.
3. Heading: Sponsor Forms
3.1 IMM 1344
3.2 Application Fees Receipt
4. Heading: Principal Applicant Forms
4.1 IMM 0008
4.2 IMM 5406 (we only filled out one)
4.3 IMM 5669 (added an additional sheet of international travel with a photo of my passport stamps)
5. Heading: Sponsor and Principal Applicant Forms
5.1 IMM 5532
(Additional sheets to provide our relationship time-line which is roughly 3 pages) - Answer to Question 11 Section C
6. Heading: Sponsor Supporting Documents
6.1 Sponsor Canadian Passport copy
6.2 Detailed plan of proof that Sponsor will live in Canada when applicant is approved (roughly 120 pages of proof and a "strategy plan" of everything we have done in terms of planning to move)
6.3 Documentation showing that I can support the applicant once in Canada
7. Heading: Principal Applicant Supporting Documents
7.1 Copies of most recent Passport (2018) and birth certificate
7.2 Statutory declaration of common-law relationship (although not required since we have no co-signer)
7.3 Original police clearance certificate of applicant (received 31 July 2018)
7.4 2 x photos of principal applicant (details written on back of the photos)
7.5 Proof of our relationship (roughly 100 pages where I include all documents relating to our relationship including lease agreement, bank accounts, envelope with 20 photos, relationship support letters, 2 x statutory declarations from family members and so forth)
So that was it. After we compiled the whole thing and went over our checklist and signature parts a few times, I wrapped it and sent it away. Some details I thought I'd include, as we struggled over the past two years to get solid info.
Details of supporting documents and photos to follow
1. Visa officers are people too and they are pretty overworked. 2017 Jan-Jun statistics show that over 31,000 applications were received for only overseas applications in just half a year. That is only a fraction of total PR applications for the six month period with was around 200,000 applications, and immigration has been increasing over the years... The application should be concise and to the point, one can argue that there is a high chance of volunteering information that can be negatively used against the application. If anything reduce you're environmental waste!
2. You're not the only one applying! When you dump a 100 page application, not only does it take extremely long for them to go through it, it also takes time away from other people trying to reunify with their spouse/family. If I was to guess, they probably had to go through all that in case their is any information in their that has been subtly included (and potentially can be used against the sponsor/PA). It's totally unfair to take up precious time from others just so you could have a "stronger" case.
3. Sponsorship is funded by Canadian tax-payers. Increasing the work hour requirement to go through an extensive application increases the cost that the government has to bear, which is funded by tax.
4. The immigration process is streamlined and regulated by the government for a reason. The forms and required supporting documents aren't arbitrary, they are a result of countless laws/process improvements that aim to reduce immigration time while balancing the workload on the government. If they wanted 100 page applications, they would have asked for it. It's applications like this that force the government to rethink and limit their forms negatively. I mean, you had a pretty solid case: you lived together for over 2 years, so why did you feel the need to justify it by another 100 pages?
5. Given your strong case, there is no evidence that your case was processed faster as a result of that extensive application. Your timeline shows pretty standard application processing times. In fact the first AOR was received significantly above the average time (30 is average, yours was 100.. hmm I wonder why). The only reason a few months were saved was because of extremely lucky processing times like: 2 days between SA and ECAS-PRAS + Medical exam passed in 6 days + 7 days for passport stamp.
Please don't encourage 31,000 people to send in applications that are measured by weight rather than quality!
Having said that, the organization of the documents is good but we don't know how the visa office prefers their documents apart from the document checklist. So really, that's just a shot in the dark.
No hard and Fast rules for that. Just attach all expl. letters after the forms. Letter should clearly specify on top for example the following:-
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION: 1st name, last name [ IMM 5532 E 04-2017]
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
No need to sign at the end but it won't hurt to sign
Thanks for your information.It really helps me.We are applying abroad too.I want to ask where did you sent your application?
Well it depends on if you are in canada or outside and if you are going to quebec or another province. Write me and I'll send you the adress
we want to send our application from Iran. we both live in Iran an we are going to go Ontario.
You should have more up vote because that is exactly what I thought when I saw that big pile. Officers don't want MORE then what they ask and normally it results in a longer treatment.
Anyone else out there want to take the time to outline how they put together their package? I found this to be a very helpful post and i'd love to read/see other examples of how people organized their application especially how they ordered the documents and how they sectioned parts off.
I made 3 little bundles, each one put together with a paper clip. Bundle one had the checklist, the barcode pages and all the application forms. Bundle two had all the civil documents (photocopies of passports, husband's birth certificate, police certificate, marriage certificate, etc). Bundle three had all our proof of relationship stuff, and for that one I quickly typed up a little cover page to let them know what each thing was, and which category it was for (so I explained that we had photocopies of the cards people sent us after we married, various bills and things relating to the time we lived together, our proof of visiting each other since I moved to a different country, etc). Then I just put them all in a plastic envelope (since it was March in Nova Scotia and I didn't want everything to get soggy!) and sent it off. Nothing more fancy than that.