supervisa medical exam must be upfront?

[BrianDell]

Checklist for China says "You should take the required medical examination before submitting the Super Visa application by visiting one of the Panel Physicians for China and Mongolia."

Is this an absolute must? The checklist for a permanent residency app also called for an upfront medical and we ignored that to our advantage. I'm reluctant to apply for the mother-in-law's supervisa with an upfront medical because I think it's a longshot to get it when she is retired and has never been out of her country before. The medical cost would be a lot more than the price of a visa application.

I realize people will be of the opinion that we should follow the checklist. I got the same thing when I told people we weren't doing my wife's PR app medical upfront because I've seen too many people have their medicals expire on them or otherwise constrain them. I'm interested in people's actual experience here.

 

[scylla]

Yes - it's a must if you want the application to be processed as a super visa application. It will be processed as a regular visitor visa if you fail to do a medical up front.

 

[BrianDell]

I am now leaning towards a regular visa application and just extending that if necessary since there's no way she'd be here for more than 12 months and from what I can tell there isn't any evidence that submitting the paperwork for a supervisa reduces the odds of rejection. I've heard that going the cheap route on the health insurance can impact rejection rates since high deductibles are questioned, but then again that's from a health insurer. That would nonetheless stand to reason since really it's a continuum between being uninsured and fully insured. If they say the applicant is only partially insured anyway how much is the insurance really helping.

Stats from a couple years ago indicated that the rejection rate for supervisas is actually slightly higher, although that's probably good news since one could reasonably expect rejection rates to be a lot higher given the demographic profile of supervisa applicants (often no remaining employment ties to the home country etc). The extra documentation for the supervisa should help, at least in theory, but I think indicating an ability to stay in Canada longer - which the supervisa implies - weakens ties to the home country all else equal.