My journey and landing - Minneapolis to Toronto

[avi_15]

Here is a summary of my Landing experience in Canada. I moved after getting an offer
for a job in Toronto. I was able to get the offer because the company was a US based employer and wasnt fussy about having a PR card or Canadian Social
They had my interviews over the phone and didnt even bother to check my passports
for canadian PR.


I had been working on US for the last 3.5 years and moved directly
via land( myself, my wife and 2 year old son). I imported my car from US and hence drove in it from
Minneapolis to Toronto


It was a 24 hour drive (adding immigration counter time also)
I had packed my car to the max with luggage and household goods
and also put a roof top carrier. I had sent via Fedex(Ground shipping) 4 large suitcases
of clothes (spent 300 USD on that) as there wasnt any apace in my car for that


Drove from Minneapolis to Chicago the first day and stayed
there for the night with relatives


Left Chicago the 2nd day in the morning at 11.00 am to reach Detroit
at 5.30 pm. This turned out to be bad planning as this was a rush hour time and
ambassador bridge and POE was clogged with daily commuters
between Detroit and Windsor..


At the US customs I exported my car (in detroit). this was a simple
procedure and they just stamped the title of my car. i showed them
the original title in my name and the copy of fax confirmation of title of the car
which was mailed to them a week back. It was dead silent in their office and
i was the only visitor for them. then filled gas at duty free and headed for amby bridge


Then drove across the ambassador bridge and it took me 1 hour to reach the
entry checkposts because of the traffic. The officer saw our passports and
the landing forms and asked us if we had ever been to canada . then he gave us a yellow slip
and asked to park our car and go into the immigration building.
by now it was 6.30 -7 pm and dark and cold. there were a few people there but nobody was completing he landing. we were the only ones. an officer called us to his counter
and asked for our landing forms, passport and asked if we had filled the b4 forms. we had
done our homework., he took the jewellery photos and the b4 forms and the excels which we had prepared as a summary of what we were bringing and the goods to follow.


he told us to wait and told he had to finish filling some forms.
he called us after some time and told us to sign on the copr forms
my wife signed for our son who is 2 years old(he gave us a copy of those landing forms). he cancelled the visas on our passports and noted the
canadian address we gave on the landing forms
he then stamped and gave us out jewellery photos and b4 forms. he also asked me for the money
i was carrying. i was carrying all my USD in bank drafts and very few cash.
he wanted to see all those drafts. I also told him that i had sent all my clothes via Fedex
and how to avoid tax on those and what would i need to show to the customs when getting those cleared. to this he replied that they are most worried about the big ticket items like
jewelllery and not clothes and that i should show the stamped B4 to the customs if required.
he also asked to me show the title of the my car to him and told me to pay the tax (105 USD)
at another counter.

after all these procedures were done. he told me that we could now leave. There was no " Welcome to Canada" thing . I asked him to remove the I94's from our passports but he said
" dont you want to go back to US" to which i said NO...he said are you sure and i said " yes i am ".. then he took off those I94's. He didnt tell when the PR cards would arrive at our canadian address and i also forgot to ask him the same as i would anyways not be going back
to US and stay in Toronto.It took us around 1.5 to 2 hours at the immigration. counter

Then we started our journey onwards to Toronto and reached our hotel at 3 AM.
My employer had booked me a hotel for 2 weeks initial stay

My fedexed bags arrived 4 days later at home . they were automatically custom cleared and
i didnt have to go and have those manually cleared

Overall a hectic journey but a memorable one. all in all there wasnt any snow and the drive
was much better than expected.

Let me know if you want any more details
I will post my views about Canada and the differences between US and Canada in a separate post


Avi

 

[gabrielsjimenez]

Good landing experience Avi,thank you so much for the information you posted..God bless.

 

[Cam1234]

Good landing experience Avi,thank you so much for the information you posted..God bless.

Great Post Avi, thank you ;D