BrianDell said:
I don't see any particular reason to do an upfront medical prior to sending one's application to Mississauga. We didn't do the medical until after the file was transferred overseas, and there's no reason to believe that we have been delayed at all. One can still do an upfront medical after one's sent one's application to Mississauga. We now have medical results received that are valid until 2016.
The problem concerning upfront medical examinations is more complicated than you state. If you start with CIC's publication 'Medical exam for permanent residents' there is a statement as follows:
There are two ways you can have an immigration medical exam, depending on your immigration category: >Wait for instructions once you have submitted your application > Undergo your exam before you submit your application (Only for certain Family Class applicants) The immigration category under discussion is permanent residency. So the publication appears to give applicants a choice. One category of family class applicants who enjoy that choice is
inland applicants. In the instructions for those applicants appears a paragraph which reads: '
You may either: . undergo an upfront medical examination by contacting a Panel Physician or . wait until your application is reviewed and medical instructions are provided to you by the immigration office Also the document checklist for inland applicants states :'
Optional: proof of completion of the upfront medical examination from the Panel Physician. If you do not hold a valid medical report, instructions will be given to you when you receive your notice of eligibility' No such choice is explicitly given to outland applcants.
Outland applications are different. There are two relevant document checklists to consider:
(1) The sponsor's checklist. This is an universal form ie it does not differ according to the country of the immigrant. In the heading of that checklist appear the words:'
If you do not enclose all the required forms and documents, your entire application will be returned to you. Pausing there, 'your entire application' appears to mean the application to sponsor. Document 27 at the bottom of the second page of the checklist states '
Proof of medical examination for the sponsored person and each of his or her dependants (Copy 1 of the Medical Report Client Biodata and Summary (IMM 1017) signed and provided by the panel physician) Pausing there again, the consequence of those instructions seems quite clear: if there is no upfront examination the sponsor cannot enclose a proof of medical examination and if he/she does not do so the application to sponsor
will be returned to the sponsor.
(2) The applicant's checklist. These differ according to the applicable country specific instructions. I am not going to try to analyze every checklist but it may be worth mentioning the following: (a) most of Europe, including UK and France. This does not contain any threat to return in the heading to the checklist . It however states:
Send photocopies of all other documents [ie other than the immigration forms and police certificates] unless instructed otherwise Paragraph 12 on the second page also requires '
Proof of Medical Examination. Include for yourself and each of your family members proof of completion of the upfront medical examination from the Panel Physician'. That is unambiguous: 'include' can only mean send it in the application package. (b) The immigrant document checklist appropriate to the People's Republic of China is similar but includes the following additional sentence:
'If there is a conflict between this guide and any other versions or publications, this document and its instructions take precedence and are to be followed' Paragraph 14 on the second page is in the same terms as paragraph 12 of the European instructions (above). That means that applicants whose applications are to be processed in Beijing cannot rely on the wording of the CIC publication 'Medical Exam for Permanent Residents' referred to at the beginning of this post.
It is quite clear that from time to time applicants for sponsorship get approved notwithstanding a failure by the applicant and his/her family members to undergo an upfront examination or the fialure of the sponsor to enclose the requisite proof; but it is unwise to extrapolate from such experiences a general principle that it does not matter whether or not an upfront medical is taken and the requisite proof is enclosed with the application. Inland applicants excepted, the safer course is to comply with the instructions, for the immigrant to undergo an upfront medical and to enclose the proof in the application bundle. So notwithstanding what you say there is a 'particular reason to undergo an upfront medical': failure to do so risks having the application returned to you.
You and I were both lucky, but if your application to sponsor was delayed only for a day or two you were luckier than I was. I included proof of the upfront medical but failed to include an Additional Family Information Form (IMM 5406) with my application. Instead of having the whole application bundle returned I was lucky enough to be asked to provide it. I promptly did so, but the application to sponsor took twice as long as most others. So I definitely do not endorse your conclusions.