After being approved by Singapore and got visa stamping done in Ottawa, I took my mom to Coutts land border in Alberta Friday afternoon to complete her landing formality. The process was so quick and seamless. Since we wanted to avoid busy weekend we decided to go Friday afternoon and both sides were pretty much quiet, even though it is the biggest border crossing in Alberta. We were one of very few passenger vehicles, the rest were cargo trucks at the time.
Quite different from others' experiences, it took us longer at the U.S office than on Canadian side. On the U.S side, we were told to park the car and came inside the building. Officer was nice, after about 20 minutes doing some paperworks on computer (I think their computer system was somehow slower than usual) he came back and gave my mom notice of refusal of admission into the U.S. Without being asked, he told us not to worry as this has nothing to do with our entry records to the U.S, it is an administrative refusal that we need to present to Canada to do the landing on Canadian side tonight. He said you guys can declare "no" if later being asked if ever refused into the U.S. Then he drove his car to escort us back to the U-turn into Canada.
Once on Canadian soil, the frontline officer at the gate asked what we were there for, and took my Canadian passport and my mom foreign passport. He asked typical custom questions about items or cash to declare to which we responded no. He then gave us a yellow paper, asked us to pull over to the front building and come inside with all other paperworks. Friendly, quick and professional.
We went inside, there was nobody in the line for landing, we were the only people (actually just my mom) there at 8pm Friday afternoon. One male officer greeted us warmly and asked if mother can speak English, if not I will need to translate. He was the only immigration officer on duty at the time I guess. He immediately proceeded to the COPR signing process, and asked mom 2 questions printed on COPR, which are "ever been arrested" and "any other dependent children". He didn't ask anything else. He asked us to surrender any residence permits we had. Then he asked me to write down Canadian address to send PR card. Mom initialed on the 2 COPR copies for those 2 questions and signed at the bottom. He then told us to sit and wait. After 5-7 minutes of entering data in the system, he called us back, and very nicely and warmly smiled and said to us "Please tell your mom I congratulate her for becoming a PR today. It's all done now. Expect her PR Card to arrive within 90 days". He stapled her COPR to the passport and told us this paper is her temporary proof of PR. He gave us a paper instruction on how to get SIN and Health Care. By the way make sure you bring any immigration permits you had since they do ask you to surrender at the time of landing.
Our own experience about landing at land border was quite pleasant, quick and easy. The whole process for both US and Canadian side was just about 30 minutes. I guess we came during less busy hours so the officers from both sides were nice and helpful, though I heard some people had very bad and scary experiences with officers at border crossings in Alberta when they try to validate their COPR during busy hours, especially at the Carway POE. I heard officers at land borders are not as friendly as those stationed at airports and they rarely say "congrats" etc., but in our case it was quite different at Coutts.
