Guys,
I just returned home from Calgary after fulfilling PR landing formalities.
Here's my experience:
Landed Calgary on 18th Feb at 12:20 pm along with my spouse and two boys.
We were in queue for 45 minutes before called in by CBSA.
CBSA Agent: why we landed in Calgary. Me: To land as PR immigrant.
Agent smiled and said, "Welcome to Canada". She scanned our passport and cancelled our immigrant visa. We were asked to join another queue for immigrants.
There were about 10 people in that queue. One lady (I think she was volunteer to guide new immigrants) once she learnt that we landed as immigrants, gave us a lot of literature (pamphlets and papers) for settling down. Meanwhile, we were called in by a lady officer who asked following questions:
Who is primary applicant? How many people are accompanying me? What is the age of my kids? How much money I was carrying? Address where my PR card can be sent?
After providing all answers, she asked us to sign on each of the COPR forms and proceed to customs.
Customs officer greeted us and asked what goods we were carrying, and what were goods to follow. He was happy to see that I had prepared three sets of print outs of goods accompanied as well as goods to follow. Infact, he said two would have sufficed. I had prepared separate list for my wife's jewellry and two vehicles. He said that he cannot sign the jewellery part since they wanted a certified document from the assessor. I said we don't have it but we were carrying photos of them. He consulted his supervisor and she gave her consent after looking at the pictures. All the papers and photos were taped with barcode stickers, numbered and stamped.
We were out of customs by 2:30 pm.
We headed straight to Service Canada office for SIN application. Agent immediately noticed that my wife's COPR wasn't signed and gave us an address in downtown to contact immigration office and find what can be done for lack of signature. We had some quick food in the food court and decided to head back to airport instead of downtown office. Drive to the airport was full of suspense and nightmares of how this whole drama would unfold. As soon as we reached the immigration office at airport and brought this issue to one of the agents at desk, he asked us to wait. Within few minutes, same officer who had signed our documents came by and apologized. Wow! never can I dream such courtesy with US officers. We were out of airport at 4:45 pm, but bit late since the SIN office closes at 4:30 pm. We headed straight towards hotel and applied for SIN card the next day.
Return to US experience
Except for my wife, all three of us had expired visa on expired passports since we never left US after our first entry.
Only question asked by officer - what was your purpose of visit to Canada? Reply: To fulfil CDN PR formalities.
Officer just looked at I-797 petitions, took away the old I-94's and stapled new to our passports.
Man, that was a BIG surprise - 10 minutes and we were done with stamps, finger printing and photos (self and spouse). We just reached home few minutes ago and I thought of writing a brief narative in the benefit of the people to follow.
I hope this helps.
Taps
