- Jul 22, 2011
- 4
- Category........
- Visa Office......
- CHC-ISB
- Job Offer........
- Pre-Assessed..
- App. Filed.......
- 20-06-2011
- IELTS Request
- Not needed, took the GRE
- Med's Request
- 28-07-2011
- Med's Done....
- 30-07-2011 (results forwarded to New Delhi on 05-08-2011)
- Interview........
- N/A
- Passport Req..
- 01-08-2011
- VISA ISSUED...
- Stamped 12-08-2011; Valid Till 12-08-2015; Picked up on 18-08-2011 (Total Process Took 8 Weeks)
- LANDED..........
- Hoping to land on 09-09-2011
This is a follow-up to my previous post in which I listed the documents I submitted to get my Study Permit:
http://www.canadavisa.com/canada-immigration-discussion-board/documents-i-submitted-to-get-my-study-permit-t81089.0.html
Here are some lessons that I learned from my overall experience with the CHC in Islamabad and my Study Permit application in particular.
General
1. Unless you have a formal invitation letter from someone fairly well-established in Canada who is able to send you a property lease, tax returns, that sort of thing -- and preferably from an institution of some sort -- as well as fairly stable, long-term employment, do not bother applying for a visit visa for Canada from Pakistan. It's almost certain to be refused.
2. Start planning well in advance for the Study Permit application. Even though in the end I got lucky and managed to get my Study Permit on time, I could have easily submitted my application much earlier than June 20 if I had started collecting the documents -- particularly my police certificates -- before I even got my acceptance letters from my university (that would have been early April or so).
3. Check if your passport is valid to the end of your required Study Permit. If not, best to have it renewed as soon as possible. I wanted a four-year Study Permit, so I made it a point to get my passport renewed for the next five years -- don't give the CHC any reasons to give you a shorter visa than what you want!
Prepping the University for the Process
1. I don't think most universities have any idea how hard it is for international students to get Study Permits -- so you have to prepare them thoroughly. I told both my supervisor and my graduate program secretary via e-mail right at the start that the process was going to be tough, and that I would need their support. In particular I put pressure on them to prepare my acceptance letters as quickly as possible and send them as fast as they could.
2. If you have a personal supervisor in your program, get them to write you a personalized academic reference. My supervisor wrote me a reference explaining why I was a good fit for working with him in his lab and I think it really strengthened my application.
3. I got the original acceptance e-mail from my university on April 7, telling me that they would be extending me an offer of admission. They then sent me one of their letters of admission via regular mail. That letter didn't reach me after two weeks of their having sent it -- and that got me a little concerned (I actually never received it). I then told my university to send the letters to a friend of mine in Toronto. They reached him in two days, and he sent them to me in Pakistan via FedEx, so they reached me within the next five days. I don't know about the experience of others, but regular mail turned out to be highly unreliable for me.
Police Certificates
1. It takes a week to get a local police certificate in Pakistan, and I have lived in both Islamabad and Lahore and had to get police certificates made from both cities. It's a gigantic pain, but you just have to do it. I definitely recommend collecting the police certificates in advance so you can submit your visa application as soon as you get your acceptance letters.
2. If you want to submit an FBI background check -- and I have to say, I think this is what saved me in the end from having to wait for months before having my Study Permit approved -- you should get going on it at least six weeks in advance of when you hope to submit your Study Permit application.
I made the mistake of applying for it later than I should have. I had my fingerprints taken on April 30 and sent them to the FBI on the same day. They reached the FBI on May 3. The FBI finished processing my fingerprints on June 10 (about six weeks after I submitted them), and on June 13, mailed out my FBI background check certificate to an address in the United States that I had given them (a friend's home). The friend got the certificate by June 15, sent it to me via FedEx, and I got it on June 20, and submitted my visa application on the same day. Given how long this took, I really should have applied for the FBI certificate in late March or early April.
The details for getting the FBI background check are here:
http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/background-checks
As I said, I e-mailed the FBI and they told me that they can run this check for anyone anywhere in the world. What they gave me in the end was a sealed letter that said "NO ARREST RECORD" that I submitted with my Study Permit application.
There is a specific fingerprint form you have to fill out for this:
http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/background-checks/standard-fingerprint-form-fd-258
I took TWO copies of this form with me to a police officer in the F-8 Markaz in Islamabad, who took my fingerprints (very professionally) on both copies of the form. I then FedEx-ed the forms with my credit card information to the FBI. I recommend that anybody wanting to get the FBI character certificate submit at least TWO copies of the fingerprint form, because that way, the FBI has two sets of prints that they can work with to check your record.
Correspondence with the CHC
1. I sent quite a few e-mails to the CHC (at islamabad-im-enquiry@international.gc.ca), and they always replied to me. I had asked them earlier whether I could submit my Study Permit application without the FBI character certificate and send the FBI certificate in separately when it reached me. They wrote back to say that I should wait for the FBI certificate to come and then submit my visa application as an incomplete application would not be processed. (It was necessary for me to submit the FBI certificate as I had done an MA in the United States.)
2. A few days before I got my medical call on July 28, I had written the CHC an e-mail to tell them my current situation with my university. I told them that my Research Assistant stipend had been finalized, that my Teaching Assistantship contract was ready, and that I had just signed a housing contract with the university and paid the housing deposit. My supervisor had e-mailed me to ask me whether I had gotten the Study Permit or not (I told you these guys were clueless about how hard it is to get it!), so I forwarded that e-mail at the bottom of my own to let them know that my university was waiting for me to come. They wrote back to me to say that the information I had provided them had been added to my file.
When the CHC returned my documents, they included this e-mail -- so they had in fact printed it out and added it to my file.
3. I also sent the CHC an e-mail to say that I had gotten one of my sisters' year of birth wrong on the Family Information Form! At this point they had already finalized my application, according to their reply, so I guess it didn't really matter much to them!
Reasons for Refusal That I Didn't Know About Before
From hanging out on this forum, I learned that Study Permits can also be refused for the following reasons:
1. Immigration Status -- apparently if you have resident status in any other country apart from the country which you are applying from, you need to document this on your application properly. Some people with resident status in Saudi Arabia got their Study Permits rejected because they didn't submit the exit-re-entry visa you have to get when you leave Saudi Arabia. I didn't personally have any such issue going on.
2. Family Ties in Canada or Country of Residence -- again, you can get rejected if you don't properly document your (immediate, not extended) family ties in Canada or in your country of residence. I did show my family ties in Pakistan (my mother lives and works here), but I think I could have also documented my father's residential status in Lebanon more rigorously, which is where he works (however, I do not personally have resident status in Lebanon so maybe it didn't matter to them) -- I showed my father's employment contract but not his passport or residential card.
3. Expiry Date on the Letter of Admission -- I had no idea that your Study Permit can get rejected if your letter of admission expires before the processing is complete. In fact I didn't even know what the expiry date on my letter of admission was -- turns out it was September 12, 2011. So I ended up getting lucky, but if my Study Permit hadn't come in last week, I might actually be in a bit of trouble.
http://www.canadavisa.com/canada-immigration-discussion-board/documents-i-submitted-to-get-my-study-permit-t81089.0.html
Here are some lessons that I learned from my overall experience with the CHC in Islamabad and my Study Permit application in particular.
General
1. Unless you have a formal invitation letter from someone fairly well-established in Canada who is able to send you a property lease, tax returns, that sort of thing -- and preferably from an institution of some sort -- as well as fairly stable, long-term employment, do not bother applying for a visit visa for Canada from Pakistan. It's almost certain to be refused.
2. Start planning well in advance for the Study Permit application. Even though in the end I got lucky and managed to get my Study Permit on time, I could have easily submitted my application much earlier than June 20 if I had started collecting the documents -- particularly my police certificates -- before I even got my acceptance letters from my university (that would have been early April or so).
3. Check if your passport is valid to the end of your required Study Permit. If not, best to have it renewed as soon as possible. I wanted a four-year Study Permit, so I made it a point to get my passport renewed for the next five years -- don't give the CHC any reasons to give you a shorter visa than what you want!
Prepping the University for the Process
1. I don't think most universities have any idea how hard it is for international students to get Study Permits -- so you have to prepare them thoroughly. I told both my supervisor and my graduate program secretary via e-mail right at the start that the process was going to be tough, and that I would need their support. In particular I put pressure on them to prepare my acceptance letters as quickly as possible and send them as fast as they could.
2. If you have a personal supervisor in your program, get them to write you a personalized academic reference. My supervisor wrote me a reference explaining why I was a good fit for working with him in his lab and I think it really strengthened my application.
3. I got the original acceptance e-mail from my university on April 7, telling me that they would be extending me an offer of admission. They then sent me one of their letters of admission via regular mail. That letter didn't reach me after two weeks of their having sent it -- and that got me a little concerned (I actually never received it). I then told my university to send the letters to a friend of mine in Toronto. They reached him in two days, and he sent them to me in Pakistan via FedEx, so they reached me within the next five days. I don't know about the experience of others, but regular mail turned out to be highly unreliable for me.
Police Certificates
1. It takes a week to get a local police certificate in Pakistan, and I have lived in both Islamabad and Lahore and had to get police certificates made from both cities. It's a gigantic pain, but you just have to do it. I definitely recommend collecting the police certificates in advance so you can submit your visa application as soon as you get your acceptance letters.
2. If you want to submit an FBI background check -- and I have to say, I think this is what saved me in the end from having to wait for months before having my Study Permit approved -- you should get going on it at least six weeks in advance of when you hope to submit your Study Permit application.
I made the mistake of applying for it later than I should have. I had my fingerprints taken on April 30 and sent them to the FBI on the same day. They reached the FBI on May 3. The FBI finished processing my fingerprints on June 10 (about six weeks after I submitted them), and on June 13, mailed out my FBI background check certificate to an address in the United States that I had given them (a friend's home). The friend got the certificate by June 15, sent it to me via FedEx, and I got it on June 20, and submitted my visa application on the same day. Given how long this took, I really should have applied for the FBI certificate in late March or early April.
The details for getting the FBI background check are here:
http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/background-checks
As I said, I e-mailed the FBI and they told me that they can run this check for anyone anywhere in the world. What they gave me in the end was a sealed letter that said "NO ARREST RECORD" that I submitted with my Study Permit application.
There is a specific fingerprint form you have to fill out for this:
http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/background-checks/standard-fingerprint-form-fd-258
I took TWO copies of this form with me to a police officer in the F-8 Markaz in Islamabad, who took my fingerprints (very professionally) on both copies of the form. I then FedEx-ed the forms with my credit card information to the FBI. I recommend that anybody wanting to get the FBI character certificate submit at least TWO copies of the fingerprint form, because that way, the FBI has two sets of prints that they can work with to check your record.
Correspondence with the CHC
1. I sent quite a few e-mails to the CHC (at islamabad-im-enquiry@international.gc.ca), and they always replied to me. I had asked them earlier whether I could submit my Study Permit application without the FBI character certificate and send the FBI certificate in separately when it reached me. They wrote back to say that I should wait for the FBI certificate to come and then submit my visa application as an incomplete application would not be processed. (It was necessary for me to submit the FBI certificate as I had done an MA in the United States.)
2. A few days before I got my medical call on July 28, I had written the CHC an e-mail to tell them my current situation with my university. I told them that my Research Assistant stipend had been finalized, that my Teaching Assistantship contract was ready, and that I had just signed a housing contract with the university and paid the housing deposit. My supervisor had e-mailed me to ask me whether I had gotten the Study Permit or not (I told you these guys were clueless about how hard it is to get it!), so I forwarded that e-mail at the bottom of my own to let them know that my university was waiting for me to come. They wrote back to me to say that the information I had provided them had been added to my file.
When the CHC returned my documents, they included this e-mail -- so they had in fact printed it out and added it to my file.
3. I also sent the CHC an e-mail to say that I had gotten one of my sisters' year of birth wrong on the Family Information Form! At this point they had already finalized my application, according to their reply, so I guess it didn't really matter much to them!
Reasons for Refusal That I Didn't Know About Before
From hanging out on this forum, I learned that Study Permits can also be refused for the following reasons:
1. Immigration Status -- apparently if you have resident status in any other country apart from the country which you are applying from, you need to document this on your application properly. Some people with resident status in Saudi Arabia got their Study Permits rejected because they didn't submit the exit-re-entry visa you have to get when you leave Saudi Arabia. I didn't personally have any such issue going on.
2. Family Ties in Canada or Country of Residence -- again, you can get rejected if you don't properly document your (immediate, not extended) family ties in Canada or in your country of residence. I did show my family ties in Pakistan (my mother lives and works here), but I think I could have also documented my father's residential status in Lebanon more rigorously, which is where he works (however, I do not personally have resident status in Lebanon so maybe it didn't matter to them) -- I showed my father's employment contract but not his passport or residential card.
3. Expiry Date on the Letter of Admission -- I had no idea that your Study Permit can get rejected if your letter of admission expires before the processing is complete. In fact I didn't even know what the expiry date on my letter of admission was -- turns out it was September 12, 2011. So I ended up getting lucky, but if my Study Permit hadn't come in last week, I might actually be in a bit of trouble.
