Hello Everyone,
I want to pass on our recent experiences in hopes it will help others. These forums have been integral to helping us make decisions regarding the immigration process.
My husband and I received first-stage approval (AIP) with CIC in March 2011 for in-land spousal sponsorship. He is not from a visa exempt country, so it made our much needed emergency visit to his home country quite complicated and risky. We did not have time to apply for a Multiple Entry Visitor Visa at the Seattle Consulate (no expedited or walk-in appointments were allowed), so we left Canada December 2011 and applied for the Visa at the Sao Paulo consulate. From the advice at Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) at Vancouver airport, they said we would be approved as long as we had AIP.
PLEASE NOTE: PROCESSING TIMES AND REQUIREMENTS ARE DIFFERENT AT OVERSEAS CONSULATES. SENDING AND RECEIVING THE APPLICATION AND PASSPORT WAS A NIGHTMARE. What this means is, there may be a lot of added headaches you have to account for, that would probably never present as obstacles if done in Canadian consulates in the United States. For us, there were very specific ways to pay the fees, often long line-ups, and miscommunications between the consulate staff and the courier services, even though we followed their website instructions meticulously!!!
We finally received the Multiple Entry Visitor Visa a few days before our scheduled return to Vancouver airport. This however, is ONLY a KEY to get to the border or other Port of Entry (POE). The Visitor Visa did not give him "status", as his stay prior to leaving Canada had to have been authorized. His Open Work Permit (OWP) which was still valid, is what got him 'across' the POE. We didn't realize they were two different things. In other words, the Entry Visa we had spent $450 CDN on (which includes the exorbitant fees required by the consulate in his home country) was just a formality, and perhaps even without one, the agent may have let him pass through since he had his OWP and proof that we had a pending PR application in process. Needless to say, we had no trouble entering Canada in January 2012 during the in-land application process since we had the AIP, OWP, and the Visitor Visa.
But my timeline may also help others. AIP and OWP was granted on March 24, 2011. According to the FOSS notes I ordered, RCMP clearance was done prior to AIP, but the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) background/security clearance was not requested by CIC until August 25, 2011. The CSIS clearance is updated/sent in quarterly (every 3 months), which was received by CIC -Vegreville on December 12, 2011. Why there was such a long wait between AIP and request for CSIS security clearance, who knows!!!
I can tell you that I kept weekly contact with call centre agents at CIC after the 8 month 'second stage' timeline after AIP, who did more to add to the confusion, or yell at me as to why I was so concerned 'where' this CSIS clearance is. I had to be sure the CSIS clearance was still outstanding, so that I could write a formal letter to the Director of CSIS, and get his/her bureaucratic response within 30 days of receipt. It turns out that only one call centre agent had it right, that the clearance was already submitted to CIC, and we just have to wait. The other 6 gave me the 'run-around'. These agents do not like to be called 'operators', and they are either mis-informed on some things or they are overworked. There is a disclaimer on their telephone hotline saying that call centre agents will not tolerate rude and intimidating behaviour, yet there were two ladies who crossed that line. One lady - Nicole - should be reviewed or retrained, as she regressed when advising me to not leave the country WITH THE AIP, and saying that my husband should have applied out-land, rather than in-land, thereby suggesting that I jump back in my time machine and reconsider how to weigh the pros and cons of applying in-land or out-land. (We still stand by in-land, for our particular circumstances.) She can contradict herself, because while suggesting that we should have applied via out-land for our PR, later in that same conversation she told me CIC has zero control of processing in consulates outside Canada and that it's riskier to apply for a Multiple Entry Visitor Visa in other consulates, but it's totally alright to apply for PR at these same consulates!!! Take it from me, you can get the answers you're looking for regarding your processing from these call centre agents, but you just have to speak to several or many, and get the 'collective' response.
In any event, we have our landing appointment for February 2012, and happy to see the application enter the final stages of completion. I hope our experiences help if this sounds like the same situation you're in,
Cheers
