US-based applicants, let's connect here

[Mthornt]

So, it is a MUST to install winter tires? We live in Minneapolis and we have the original ALL WEATHER tires and have not have any issue.

Thanks!

Depends on the province, for instance in Quebec there is a deadline date to have them installed, and they have to have a certain symbol on the tire attesting to the quality of the winter tire.

 

[Mrs. Kow]

On the IELTS, I think the key is practicing at home before you take the test.

Practicing gives you an idea of what to expect on the test itself. And as everyone has said, some of those sections/questions can be very confusing if you haven't seen and practiced them before. Once you get an idea of what to expect, it's a lot simpler (if still stressful...).

My wife and I did a full timed practice run each. We both got 9s and it absolutely made a difference on our total score for the ITA. We wouldn't have gotten through otherwise, considering we barely scraped by. So push for every single point increase you can. As a lot of folk still waiting on the forum can tell you, even 1 point on your total score can mean getting an ITA vs not getting one.

Good luck on the test!!!!!

I did the free online practice tests before taking IELTS, which helped a lot with the listening section. My difficulty with the writing section was finishing in time. I would have like to write more for the second task if I had more time. It surprised me how much longer it took me to write out my answers by hand than it would have to type them; it was the first time I had to handwrite essays for a test since I was in college over a decade ago. I still scored in in the top tier for points for the writing section, but my score was a bit lower than for the other sections. A tip I heard after taking the test is that you should do the second task first to make sure that you are able to finish it completely since it is worth twice as many points as the first task.

 

[kynno]

I was hoping to use my 401k as proof of fund

You certainly can. I used my 401K as part of my proof of fund and it went just fine.

 

[lampbreaker]

So, it is a MUST to install winter tires? We live in Minneapolis and we have the original ALL WEATHER tires and have not have any issue.

Thanks!

It is not a must at all. They may just increase your premiums based on that.

 

[Mthornt]

Which province are you looking at living in? I would look for info specific to that province, I had all weathers, and had to switch in Quebec. However I have never heard of this requirement in Ontario... so it may depend. Here's a little info on the Quebec tire situation, which of course will only help if you're going to settle in Quebec...

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/quebec-winter-tire-deadline-1.3300751

So, it is a MUST to install winter tires? We live in Minneapolis and we have the original ALL WEATHER tires and have not have any issue.

Thanks!

 

[DEEPCUR]

Guys, has anyone has used FedEX personal account to generate label for shipping from Canada to US? I am creating one for having my PR cards sent from my friend and have few questions..

1) I am giving declared value as $1 and checking the option of commercial invoice. Is that good enough? I believe giving $0 won't generate commercial invoice which might create an issue at customs?

2) Also I am mentioning document description as 'Legal Documents'. Is that fine? I see an option for immigration documents, but I don't want to be too explicit on what is inside for CBSA to poke in to.

3) Any idea how to add signature confirmation to the post? I don't get that option in special services.

 

[devanshitamogna]

CAR EXPORT - IMPORT PROCESS
We have a car loan for our 2016 Mazda CX-5. The remaining balance of the loan is $22K. Does anybody know if we can move the car to Canada and keep paying the loan in the US? Is it possible to transfer the loan to Wells Fargo Canada? Any other idea?
We like the idea of taking the car to Canada because at this point we will not get the money to cover the whole remaining balance, and for flexibility since we will not have any credit history in Canada and it would be hard to get a new loan there. (Or is it possible to transfer credit history from the US to Canada?
Thanks in advance for your insight regarding this!

Hello,

Did you find any solution for this? I am in the same situation and I have 19k remaining balance on my car.

 

[northern sunshine]

CELPIP re-evaluation came in today-- along with a huge wave of relief. They raised my writing evaluation to a 10! Now to wait forever for my ECA to come in... did you all use WES?

 

[Mrs. Kow]

CELPIP re-evaluation came in today-- along with a huge wave of relief. They raised my writing evaluation to a 10! Now to wait forever for my ECA to come in... did you all use WES?

I used IQAS a year ago when the processing time was 15 business days, not the 12 weeks it is now.

 

[moose17]

@Ang&Guille, I'm happy to report the 2016 CX-5 passed the safety and RIV inspections without modification! One note - the place (Canadian Tire) at one point thought the daytime running lights weren't working, but it turned out to be because they were testing them with the car parked and/or not moving. Once moving, they turn on and are good to go. Mazda's recall clearance letter did say that system was compliant and I thought it unbelievable that they would say so officially without it being true, but getting a call that Canadian Tire couldn't pass it wasn't a good time lol. Hopefully you don't have that hiccup but if you do, make them re-check with the car moving (it may work just being in drive, double-check on your own beforehand to be sure).

We got drivers licences a few days ago so now that we have the inspection forms, we just need to set up insurance and then we can bring documentation of all of it to ServiceOntario to register it here. We'll also have to get a new car seat for our daughter since upon registering it here, she'll need to be in a car seat tested to Canadian standards.

More on the rest of the moving process later or in the next few days. The last week+ has been a complete whirlwind to put it lightly, but for the most part it's gone smoothly and we're settling in so no complaints here

 

[moose17]

Here's what I can remember that was notable:

Car export: follow the instructions, we used a broker and were happy about doing so, call CBP at your border stop ahead of time, with Google Maps in front of you, to find out where to park since some places don't have parking lots. Ours (Port Huron) had us park on the highway shoulders, and thankfully the person I spoke with pointed us to a spot on the left-hand shoulder that would likely be available for parking so we didn't have to cross the highway with a toddler. It helped a lot using the satellite view and street view on Google Maps while talking to him.

Arriving on the Canadian side (keeping in mind we landed in December): First, U-Hauls go in the car lanes. I was told by a central call centre to have the U-Haul go in the truck lanes and that ended up being wrong and caused my husband a bunch of hassle (nothing terrible, just a pain explaining things again and again and he was thinking they were going to go through our [ridiculously packed in] items). So while he and my father-in-law dealt with that, I was in the customs area importing the car. That was easy enough - like exporting, just follow the instructions you're given. I needed the goods to follow form and a page I got at landing summarizing it or something. I just kept everything from landing in the same expanding file and had that with me for everything (and have taken it for just about everything we've done since too) so that was no problem. I asked about our cats and checking out the truck and was told no need to see the rabies vaccination certificates because "they're with you, they probably don't have rabies" p) and the agent wasn't concerned with looking at the goods in the truck at all. So that ended up being super easy (for me, again, my husband was re-explaining and re-explaining the damn truck lane thing the whole time I was doing this lol, and by the time he got to me I was walking out the door).

So we got through the border stuff, drove the rest of the way to Toronto, and we were making good enough time that at our stop at the bank, in addition to picking up our cheques and getting a draft for the move-in damage deposit, we also applied for their credit card. We also upgraded to the unlimited package since it only required 1k more to be in the account each month compared to the newcomer's package but got us free cheques, drafts, a safe deposit box, and a few other things.

Move-in was . . . what you'd expect moving in to be like going from a 3 bed 2 bath house to a 1+ den apartment. Not the most fun in our lives haha.

We got new cell phone plans two days later. We ended up needing our SINs for that as it was the best primary ID of the options given to us, and had to go back to our apartment because we haven't memorized them yet but luckily the place we used was close by so no big deal. We went with koodo because of their $3/month add-on that cuts the cost of US calls to 3 cents/minute. Most seemed to want $10/month per phone for unlimited calls and we won't call *that* much. When we called to close our Verizon accounts they initially were going to close our numbers but keep our plan to the end of the month Um, no guys, as I told them my SIM card was in a drawer so like actually close everything now please.

We got new PR card photos taken after calling CIC and confirming our daughter's first photo wasn't accepted either. Everyone here seems to use these light-up boards for backgrounds that must make the difference in the photos being accepted, and the workers knew to do the stamp on the back and everything. SO SO SO much easier than in the US. No explaining, they knew what to do - and supposedly if a photo is rejected Shoppers Drug Mart will retake it for free.

Health cards - ServiceOntario - no big deal. Only those over age 16 need photos so if you have kids, one less photo to manage there. They'll mail our cards a week before our eligibility date of June 1, and if for some reason they're late and we need medical care June 1 or after, we have forms they gave us and that plus a passport will serve the purpose.

Drivers licences weren't too bad. Toronto's Downsview DriveTest centre is testing letting people make appointments for licence transfers, so we actually went, saw the huge line and found out about that, went home, emailed in and got the appointments for the next day. The procedure was supposed to be that we'd be helped as soon as our desk was done with whoever was there on our arrival, but our desk was just plain empty and we had to ask for help and then finally we started on it. Our driving histories (they wanted both even though my current licence is over 2 years old) were both accepted, but my state has you get them at kiosks that use weird paper that screams "not printed at home". They also kept those so if you want a copy for another purpose, get multiples before you move.

We used Canadian Tire for the RIV and safety inspections. They said they don't do appointments, just show up. We chose one by Ikea so we could shop there during the inspection. In the middle of that, as I said before, they claimed the daytime running lights weren't working and said they couldn't pass it due to that, but yeah, they were testing it in park and figured that out at the same time we did (via google from the Ikea cafeteria) so it worked out fine.

Next we have to get insurance, then take a bunch of paperwork to ServiceOntario and get the car registered. We'll probably do so Friday or next Monday since our new Canadian-stamped car seat is arriving this next Friday and tbh we're just kind of dreading dealing with car insurance so are putting it off since we have time (also, our US insurance is WAY cheaper). I'm just going to take our giant file when we got register it because they may need COPRs and goods list or something so I'm going to cover all our bases. Ugh, I guess we'll have to go back to the library and print the insurance proof for that too (not bad really, just one more stop).

Other tips:
You'll get hungry at the most inconvenient times. If you have kids, doubly so for them. Have a lot of snacks on hand to make all the waiting and explaining and form-filling more tolerable.

Everything will take twice as long as you think between lines and things like not knowing the layouts of stores (and having to eat because "why are we all so hungry it's 3 pm!"). Plan to do as much as you can but also have contingency plans for things that will inevitably have to be pushed to another day.

Credit cards and debit cards get treated much more differently here. Don't be surprised if you suddenly need a credit card instead of debit. We found out we could only register for rec programs online with a credit card . . . at midnight when (absurdly competitive) registration opened at 7 am. We ended up calling our US Visa card to activate Canadian use at midnight so we could use it to pay for the rec program we signed up for.

Before you drop your US number, change the number in accounts that use your phone for text verifications.

Amazon's site says you can't cancel Prime mid-year and get money back but if you contact customer service and explain that you moved and can't use it anymore, they should refund you some of the cost based on how much of your year you've used.

That's all I can think of for now, and I'm happy to answer any questions!

 

[JERiv]

Here's what I can remember that was notable:

Car export: follow the instructions, we used a broker and were happy about doing so, call CBP at your border stop ahead of time, with Google Maps in front of you, to find out where to park since some places don't have parking lots. Ours (Port Huron) had us park on the highway shoulders, and thankfully the person I spoke with pointed us to a spot on the left-hand shoulder that would likely be available for parking so we didn't have to cross the highway with a toddler. It helped a lot using the satellite view and street view on Google Maps while talking to him.

Arriving on the Canadian side (keeping in mind we landed in December): First, U-Hauls go in the car lanes. I was told by a central call centre to have the U-Haul go in the truck lanes and that ended up being wrong and caused my husband a bunch of hassle (nothing terrible, just a pain explaining things again and again and he was thinking they were going to go through our [ridiculously packed in] items). So while he and my father-in-law dealt with that, I was in the customs area importing the car. That was easy enough - like exporting, just follow the instructions you're given. I needed the goods to follow form and a page I got at landing summarizing it or something. I just kept everything from landing in the same expanding file and had that with me for everything (and have taken it for just about everything we've done since too) so that was no problem. I asked about our cats and checking out the truck and was told no need to see the rabies vaccination certificates because "they're with you, they probably don't have rabies" p) and the agent wasn't concerned with looking at the goods in the truck at all. So that ended up being super easy (for me, again, my husband was re-explaining and re-explaining the damn truck lane thing the whole time I was doing this lol, and by the time he got to me I was walking out the door).

So we got through the border stuff, drove the rest of the way to Toronto, and we were making good enough time that at our stop at the bank, in addition to picking up our cheques and getting a draft for the move-in damage deposit, we also applied for their credit card. We also upgraded to the unlimited package since it only required 1k more to be in the account each month compared to the newcomer's package but got us free cheques, drafts, a safe deposit box, and a few other things.

Move-in was . . . what you'd expect moving in to be like going from a 3 bed 2 bath house to a 1+ den apartment. Not the most fun in our lives haha.

We got new cell phone plans two days later. We ended up needing our SINs for that as it was the best primary ID of the options given to us, and had to go back to our apartment because we haven't memorized them yet but luckily the place we used was close by so no big deal. We went with koodo because of their $3/month add-on that cuts the cost of US calls to 3 cents/minute. Most seemed to want $10/month per phone for unlimited calls and we won't call *that* much. When we called to close our Verizon accounts they initially were going to close our numbers but keep our plan to the end of the month Um, no guys, as I told them my SIM card was in a drawer so like actually close everything now please.

We got new PR card photos taken after calling CIC and confirming our daughter's first photo wasn't accepted either. Everyone here seems to use these light-up boards for backgrounds that must make the difference in the photos being accepted, and the workers knew to do the stamp on the back and everything. SO SO SO much easier than in the US. No explaining, they knew what to do - and supposedly if a photo is rejected Shoppers Drug Mart will retake it for free.

Health cards - ServiceOntario - no big deal. Only those over age 16 need photos so if you have kids, one less photo to manage there. They'll mail our cards a week before our eligibility date of June 1, and if for some reason they're late and we need medical care June 1 or after, we have forms they gave us and that plus a passport will serve the purpose.

Drivers licences weren't too bad. Toronto's Downsview DriveTest centre is testing letting people make appointments for licence transfers, so we actually went, saw the huge line and found out about that, went home, emailed in and got the appointments for the next day. The procedure was supposed to be that we'd be helped as soon as our desk was done with whoever was there on our arrival, but our desk was just plain empty and we had to ask for help and then finally we started on it. Our driving histories (they wanted both even though my current licence is over 2 years old) were both accepted, but my state has you get them at kiosks that use weird paper that screams "not printed at home". They also kept those so if you want a copy for another purpose, get multiples before you move.

We used Canadian Tire for the RIV and safety inspections. They said they don't do appointments, just show up. We chose one by Ikea so we could shop there during the inspection. In the middle of that, as I said before, they claimed the daytime running lights weren't working and said they couldn't pass it due to that, but yeah, they were testing it in park and figured that out at the same time we did (via google from the Ikea cafeteria) so it worked out fine.

Next we have to get insurance, then take a bunch of paperwork to ServiceOntario and get the car registered. We'll probably do so Friday or next Monday since our new Canadian-stamped car seat is arriving this next Friday and tbh we're just kind of dreading dealing with car insurance so are putting it off since we have time (also, our US insurance is WAY cheaper). I'm just going to take our giant file when we got register it because they may need COPRs and goods list or something so I'm going to cover all our bases. Ugh, I guess we'll have to go back to the library and print the insurance proof for that too (not bad really, just one more stop).

Other tips:
You'll get hungry at the most inconvenient times. If you have kids, doubly so for them. Have a lot of snacks on hand to make all the waiting and explaining and form-filling more tolerable.

Everything will take twice as long as you think between lines and things like not knowing the layouts of stores (and having to eat because "why are we all so hungry it's 3 pm!"). Plan to do as much as you can but also have contingency plans for things that will inevitably have to be pushed to another day.

Credit cards and debit cards get treated much more differently here. Don't be surprised if you suddenly need a credit card instead of debit. We found out we could only register for rec programs online with a credit card . . . at midnight when (absurdly competitive) registration opened at 7 am. We ended up calling our US Visa card to activate Canadian use at midnight so we could use it to pay for the rec program we signed up for.

Before you drop your US number, change the number in accounts that use your phone for text verifications.

Amazon's site says you can't cancel Prime mid-year and get money back but if you contact customer service and explain that you moved and can't use it anymore, they should refund you some of the cost based on how much of your year you've used.

That's all I can think of for now, and I'm happy to answer any questions!

Glad you guys made it alright! Thanks for all of the info.

 

[trumprefugee]

Hello, my US emigrants! I am happy and relieved to announce that I finally received PPR on Friday, March 9 at 10:01 pm Ottawa time! So now I am preparing the post PPR docs and have some questions.

1) Does anyone have recommendations on carriers to use for the Self-Addressed pre-paid envelope? I am leaning toward FedEx but wanted to hear from other US residents who have gone through this. Also, is the COPR just a piece of paper? What weight/size should one prepay for? I'm a US citizen so I am not sending my passport.

2) Can anyone recommend a place in New York (preferably Manhattan) that will do the photos right? I need to get new photos, as my previous ones are more than 6 months old, and I had them done at CVS (drugstore chain in the northeast) and have only 1 left. I found this one from a web search that sounds experienced at doing Canada PR photos:
http://www.doicamera.com/passport.html
Does anyone have any thoughts?

 

[moose17]

Hello, my US emigrants! I am happy and relieved to announce that I finally received PPR on Friday, March 9 at 10:01 pm Ottawa time! So now I am preparing the post PPR docs and have some questions.

1) Does anyone have recommendations on carriers to use for the Self-Addressed pre-paid envelope? I am leaning toward FedEx but wanted to hear from other US residents who have gone through this. Also, is the COPR just a piece of paper? What weight/size should one prepay for? I'm a US citizen so I am not sending my passport.

2) Can anyone recommend a place in New York (preferably Manhattan) that will do the photos right? I need to get new photos, as my previous ones are more than 6 months old, and I had them done at CVS (drugstore chain in the northeast) and have only 1 left. I found this one from a web search that sounds experienced at doing Canada PR photos:
http://www.doicamera.com/passport.html
Does anyone have any thoughts?

First, CONGRATULATIONS!!!! I'm so happy for you! We're going to have quite a crew in Toronto soon

Now, answers:
1) I used UPS. I had to make an account and payment method (and payment account? I don't remember if that was separate). You'll pay as each piece gets mailed, and anything under 4 or 5 pounds is the same price so you don't have to worry about weights. For the shipment north, I used their main page shipment creator to create a shipping label. For the shipment back, I had to use "Shipping" -> "More Shipping Options" -> "Create Import" to create the shipping label. A big help for me was going to a local shipping store. They gave me free UPS envelopes and shipping label sticky baggies and all the copies of the customs forms I needed (list the value at $1), and advised me on how to do the process (they couldn't for some reason) and how to physically put it together the best way (fold the return envelope in half inside the outbound envelope). I didn't end up prepaying anything, it just charged my account once each label was first scanned. If I remember right, for the outbound, I think it charged my payment method directly, and for the inbound, I got an invoice in the mail after a few weeks.

The COPR is just a sheet of paper, which is bugging us since it's so important! We can't wait to get our PR cards so we don't need something so fragile (plus our passports) to prove our status.

2) That studio seems okay - mostly because the price is reasonable to not hurt too much if it doesn't work (as opposed to the one option local to me that was $60 each!). The photos here all seem to be done with a light-up background so without that, I wouldn't 100% bank on it working. That said, it's also not a huge deal to retake them here if CIC rejects them. It just cost us the photos plus a stamp to mail them (we didn't do registered mail because meh). They won't actually go through them until you land so if they get rejected, you'll likely be here already and retaking and sending will be no big deal.

 

[trumprefugee]

First, CONGRATULATIONS!!!! I'm so happy for you! We're going to have quite a crew in Toronto soon

Now, answers:
1) I used UPS. I had to make an account and payment method (and payment account? I don't remember if that was separate). You'll pay as each piece gets mailed, and anything under 4 or 5 pounds is the same price so you don't have to worry about weights. For the shipment north, I used their main page shipment creator to create a shipping label. For the shipment back, I had to use "Shipping" -> "More Shipping Options" -> "Create Import" to create the shipping label. A big help for me was going to a local shipping store. They gave me free UPS envelopes and shipping label sticky baggies and all the copies of the customs forms I needed (list the value at $1), and advised me on how to do the process (they couldn't for some reason) and how to physically put it together the best way (fold the return envelope in half inside the outbound envelope). I didn't end up prepaying anything, it just charged my account once each label was first scanned. If I remember right, for the outbound, I think it charged my payment method directly, and for the inbound, I got an invoice in the mail after a few weeks.

The COPR is just a sheet of paper, which is bugging us since it's so important! We can't wait to get our PR cards so we don't need something so fragile (plus our passports) to prove our status.

2) That studio seems okay - mostly because the price is reasonable to not hurt too much if it doesn't work (as opposed to the one option local to me that was $60 each!). The photos here all seem to be done with a light-up background so without that, I wouldn't 100% bank on it working. That said, it's also not a huge deal to retake them here if CIC rejects them. It just cost us the photos plus a stamp to mail them (we didn't do registered mail because meh). They won't actually go through them until you land so if they get rejected, you'll likely be here already and retaking and sending will be no big deal.

Thanks, @moose17!

Customs forms? I'm going to look into UPS now. This afternoon will be my errands time. I'll get the photos taken and go into UPS or FedEx store.

I am hoping to move to Toronto in May, probably middle to end of the month.