Hello all,
I should have sent this note a while ago, but have been so caught up the last 2-3 weeks.
Well finally we have good news at our end. I received my wife's PR visa on Nov 11, and I went to NDVO personally to receive it. I had to go to Delhi because I needed to get 'facilitation visas' for my three young daughters as well - as their case is slightly different. Since I am a Canadian citzen, my children have the right to Canadian citizenship and therefore I had to apply for their citizenship certificates (rather than sponsor them as permanent residents) which I did earlier this year, but that takes more time to process. In the meantime for them to come to Canada, we were told that they could be issued 'faciliation visas' as soon as my wife's PR got approved so they could come to Canada with us.
But we got an unexpected call from NDVO on Nov 4th stating that my wife's PR was ready - BUT she needed to land in Canada before Nov 20th (the date her medicals expired). I was in panic mode initially because we could not travel without the children and we needed to get their facilitaion visas done in less than 10 days! I was very doubtful whether this was possible. Luckily, a visa officer in NDVO helped us right from the beginning - he told us on call that he would make all the arrangements for the childrens visas in advance, and that I just needed to give a date when I could be at NDVO in person, submit their visa applications in the morning and receive all the passports the same day in the evening. Nov 11th was that day and everything went much smoother than I thought. And this officer was very helpful - so yes there are good people in NDVO too.
I flew into India on Nov 10th, and brought my wife and my daughters back into Canada on Nov 18th, 2 days before the cutoff date.
Many thanks to all the people in the forum who helped with your advice and suggestions. Just a few points worth mentioning:
1. Apply for GCMS notes if you do not get a PPR in 1-2 months once your file has been transferred to NDVO. GCMS notes are very helpful and will not delay the processing of your file. Through the notes I got to know that we somehow missed the PPR, and also that my wife needed another PCC from UAE, which allowed us to act fast on those points. In fact I got my 3rd GCMS notes today (applied on Nov 3rdg, which reminded me to post in this forum.
2. The validity of the visa is tied to your medicals - you must land in Canada before your medicals expire. There was some talk in this forum that medicals could be extended for 3 months, but I do not think that is the case. If your medicals expire before your visa is issued, you need to redo the medicals and send it again.
3. Lastly, for those who are still waiting patiently, just hang on. A guiding principle for our family was 'This too will pass'. It's so incredibily difficult to be seperated from your families so long, and the wait is painful, sometimes unbearable which was the case for us too. But once those times pass, it's like a fresh lease of life and all the struggles you've gone through just vanish! So just hang in there and make the most of the each day as you have it.
Some final statistics on our case:
Total time for processing end-to-end: 10 months
Sponsor approval (Jan 4 - Feb 13): 1.5 months
'Application Received' to 'In Process' (Feb 13 - Aug 7): 5.5 months
In Process to Decision Made (Aug 7 - Nov 4): 3 months
Best wishes!!!
