fsarosh said:ATTENTION APPLICANTS FROM PAKISTAN
All of those Pakistani friends who have not seen any updates or progress on their cases or they have received the 18 months letter, this is a very sincere, friendly and useful to advise to all of them. If you are not living in any other country nor planning to travel in the near future and the validity of your passports are now less then 1.5 years (means your passports are going to expire in December 2014 or earlier), i would strongly suggest them to apply for a new passport. As you all know, NADRA faces a new crises every single day and in the past few months, whatever you have seen that how people painfully waited for 4-5 months to get their passports renewed is a good lesson for all of us and this should happen again as well. If, God forbid, any such thing happens again and they asks for your passports at the same time then you can imagine what will happen ???. I am also suggesting this thing because one has to travel within the validity of his medical i.e. one year and if the passport will also be valid for a shorter time, they will either not stamp the visas (because they need passports to be valid for at least 6 months or 1 year (i am not sure either its 6 months or 1 year but if they have started the processing in full swing say after 7-8 months, at that time, how you will manage to get a new passport? and time left in your hand to travel to Canada will also be shortened because of the short validity of your passport) so better get it renewed now and sit with piece of mind instead of facing this menace on the last and decisive months of your case.
I am always of the the opinion to renew one's passport at least 1-year in advance of the expiry. Mine is due to expire in Nov 2014 and i will be apply ing to renew it in Nov this year.