medical exam

[ib]

I am sponsoring my wife from France but I don't know if she has to do medical exam or she has to wait till the ask for it.

 

[svetlana]

I am sponsoring my wife from France but I don't know if she has to do medical exam or she has to wait till the ask for it.

She has to do medical too. Medicals should be sent along with the application.

 

[Awesomeg]

I am sponsoring my wife from France but I don't know if she has to do medical exam or she has to wait till the ask for it.

She can do the exams up front or she can wait for immigration to ask for the exams,
you chose,
They suggest that up front examinations will save processing time.
But I have seen many cases in which it doesn't seem to affect the time line
if done when requested.
It is up to both of you

 

[Vera16]

Hi,

I am sponsoring my husband from France too and his 15 years old son. We choose to do the medical when the sponsoring will be accepted. I sent the file on November 21/11/2015. They will ask for the medicals (my husband's one and his son's) when the file will be in Paris. It is not needed before.
Even the doctor told us it doesn't change anything to sent it in Mississauga or to wait. So we decided to wait; we know we can have an appointment with the doctor very fast and he is the one who send it by internet directly.
The future will tell us if we were right or wrong 8)

 

[blueangel371115]

Most do it right off. As I had missing documents and I re-sent them and I wound up waiting 4 months for SA on a US outland application, so personally if you have the time and money, I'd do it now. Sorry just don't want anyone to go through what I did but hopefully it's not typical. They might say it won't cause delays and many they don't but some they do. But ultimately, it's up to you.

 

[BrianDell]

In my case the medical was not done prior to application and that did not affect the timeline for sponsorship approval (SA), at least not more than a day or two. SA took a long time, but it took a long time for everyone who applied in mid-October 2014, aside from some special cases like some fast-tracked Australian applicants. At the time of sponsorship approval it stated in the SA letter:

"An original Upfront Medical Report form (IMM1017B UPFRONT) signed by a Panel Physician or an E-medical Up-Front Medical Notification information sheet has not been provided. Your relative(s) must complete the medical and once completed forward this information directly to the visa office [abroad] along with a copy of this letter. Your application has been transferred to the visa office noting this deficiency. Your relative must also forward the medical information directly to the visa office to allow continued processing of his/her application. Failure to do so will result in delays and possible refusal..."

Unfortunately, it wasn't as clean cut as I'd hoped in terms of how this was supposed to work, as I thought they'd attach an IMM1017E to the SA letter and she'd then take that form to the doctor who would say, great, they've already got you, the patient, in the system. They didn't, though, meaning that the only thing we could do is go to the doctor and do it as if it was "upfront", meaning using the doctor's upfront form, IMM1017B. The doctor checked if there was anything in the system for her but he said he searched for passport number and what we think is her UCI number (from a past denied tourist visa application) and got nothing. Maybe we should have waited at least a week for the file to be sent from Mississauga to the visa office before asking the doc to search, but "has been transferred" is past tense and probably no record is created for the applicant anyway until they start working on her file overseas, and we didn't want to wait until then since it seems to me to be an almost guaranteed delay of at least a few days while they wait for a response on the medical request.

I don't think there will be an issue in our case, since if it were too late to do an "upfront" exam now, they would surely direct us away from trying to do that at this point and just say be on alert for an overseas visa office request instead of using the word "this" in the second sentence of the quote above, thereby suggesting that "this information" refers to the previous sentence, where it talks about an upfront IMM1017B instead of a visa-office-supplied IMM1017E. The "deficiency" must be the absence of the upfront form if there's a deficiency now, and the only way to PROMPTLY remedy that is to do an "upfront" medical.

My only question now is thus, for those who did not do the medical before sending their applications to Mississauga and then did an E-medical before the overseas visa office requested a medical, what, if anything, did you do to answer what was requested in the SA letter beyond getting the medical done and having the doctor hand you the E-medical info sheet with UMI number? Did you snail mail that info sheet along with the SA letter ("along with a copy of this letter")? Or did you use the "Case Specific Enquiry" weblink they describe as the visa office's "Email" in the SA letter, and upload with the "upload your documents" function?

 

[BrianDell]

Just to follow-up on my own post, I uploaded electronically the E-medical info sheet from the medical exam done earlier this month and the sponsorship approval letter using the the "Case Specific Enquiry" weblink and now it says on E-CAS that medical results have been received.

So 1) the overseas office is clearly taking care of this sort of business related to a file even though there has yet to be any acknowledgement from the overseas office that they've received the file and started work on it 2) 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.

 

[wowsers]

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.

 

[BrianDell]

I would refer readers to the "MEDICAL UPFRONT INQUIRIES" thread (now almost 3 months old) where there is a back and forth on this issue. I disagreed then, long before I got sponsorship approval, that there was any real chance that my application would be returned to me and I have encountered no reason to change my mind since then. Anybody asserting that I was just "lucky" should be able to point to someone who was "unlucky", I think. It's not like no one has been reporting here delays they encountered when trying to get sponsorship approval.

I will grant that one's application should say SOMETHING about the medical, so they know that it hasn't just been ignored, especially if one actually DID do the upfront medical in advance of application and then didn't include the info sheet for that completed medical in the application (there is a case of an application being returned in that particular circumstance).

 

[cillyx5]

Do the approved panel physicians supply the up-front medical paperwork, or is this something I need to bring?

Some of the doctor's we have called here in the US are being pushy… Stating that we can't do an up-front medical. Quite ridiculous that they are arguing and denying something I need in order to send my outland application!

 

[rhcohen2014]

Do the approved panel physicians supply the up-front medical paperwork, or is this something I need to bring?

Some of the doctor's we have called here in the US are being pushy... Stating that we can't do an up-front medical. Quite ridiculous that they are arguing and denying something I need in order to send my outland application!

tell them specifically that you are doing a spousal sponsorship upfront medical. some immigration streams do not do medicals upfront. a lot of the time the office staff needs to be educated because they may not do the exams often enough to understand there are different applications.

if they continue to give you a problem, then let them know they are wrong and you will be reporting the doctor to CIC (and then see how quickly they change their story). The panel physicians do not dictate what the rules are, they follow them. if they can't do that properly, then they shouldn't be panel physicians and CIC needs to be notified of their actions.

yes, the doctor will give the applicant what's called an "emedical" receipt. it is a piece of paper with the applicant's picture, personal info and passport number. the exam results will be sent electronically to cic, and the receipt is what you put in the package.

 

[cillyx5]

Awesome reply, thanks for the info. I'll be ready for them when I call back to make my appointment!

 

[Rob_TO]

As long as the outland visa office is a relatively quick one (less than 1 year), there is zero benefit to delaying a medical exam. Best case scenario you would simply see the same processing times as those who submit medical upfront, but worst case you risk having your app delayed if the visa officer decides to put your app on hold with a bring-forward date when they request a medical exam. Just because one person's experience with their specific visa officer didn't see a delay, doesn't mean another person will get the same thing.

In general it's risky to delay doing medical due to:
1. Possibility a visa officer in CPC-Mississauga could view app as incomplete and return it
2. Possibility that app will go on-hold for a set amount of time when visa office requests medical
3. Possibility that communication from CIC requesting you to do medical, will go to a wrong email address or for some reason not received properly. In general you want to limit the amount of times CIC needs to request info from you.

Only time medical should even think about being delayed, is when dealing with visa offices with extreme processing times or tons of backlog.

 

[BrianDell]

It's now 3 months to SA, and it could easily be 4 months by the time they get to the applications of readers who haven't yet filed but are reading this thread. Then it goes overseas, where every last overseas visa office has a posted processing time of 8 months or more except for one (Hong Kong, which is 7). 3 + 8 = 11 months, and most posts are longer. So if your overseas post is anywhere except Hong Kong, if you had your medical done two weeks before the application was filed (which is unusual, most applicants including the upfront form with their submission to Mississauga did their medical earlier than that) unless the VO decides to extend the medical's validity there is a 20% or greater chance you'll either have less than two weeks to land in Canada after getting COPR or you won't even get your passport back before the medical expires. And this is just for these few fast embassies where the chance of going over 8 months is only 20%. The odds of going over at the typical post are significantly higher.

I do not think it is responsible to recommend doing the medical prior to submitting the application, given these statistics, and by statistics I'm including the statistic that there are zero reports of people having had their applications returned because they decided to do the medical after sponsorship approval or on overseas VO request. If one is going to call for doing the medical in advance, it should at a minimum come with a warning to having the application completely ready to go, with it all in the envelope, before doing the medical so that the day after it is done you can add it to the envelope and promptly send the whole thing to Mississauga.

Do the medical when you get sponsorship approval. Then send the results to the overseas VO instead of ever sending it to Mississauga. Simple. It didn't used to take 3 months to get SA, but now it does. Of course the checklist hasn't been updated to reflect this, this is the same government that hasn't done a "quarterly" update of overseas VO processing times since July! No reason for there to be any delays if the medical is done within a month of SA, and if you don't get the notice that you got SA, you've got bigger problems than not knowing when to get the medical done. It means 3 more months validity for your medical, and those 3 months are going to make a difference for a lot of outland applicants given the current state of affairs.

 

[MilesAway]

How can I post ..I don't understand it..help

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