surleplateau said:
OhCanadiana, I have some meta-thoughts about this thread:
Thanks
Thoughts below...
surleplateau said:
1. I noticed that the spreadsheet in your first post to this thread is the old Buffalo one from 2012... I'd like to see a more current spreadsheet, but I'm not sure who has a link to the most current one.
I see rhcohen2014 shared it to already
surleplateau said:
2. This is more curiosity than a suggestion: at what point do we start a brand-new thread for US applicants? I feel like a lot has changed since 2012. There are a lot of references to Buffalo, but I'm doubtful that anyone applying in 2015+ is going to want to read through 100+ pages from so long ago?
I can talk about this thread specifically. This thread was started when Buffalo was (suddenly) closing and the conversation in the Buffalo thread was somewhat fragmented and could easily guide folks who were just starting applications in the (suddenly) incorrect direction. The Buffalo thread at that point became largely focused on where the applications of the people in process there would head (in the end, very few of the people who had applications in process in Buffalo that stayed there. It was a very trying time for everyone as the Buffalo staff was essentially cut overnight with only a skeleton crew remaining and thus very little info was emerging (even interviews already scheduled were cancelled with no further information provided to those applicants). I suggested starting a new thread (in the Buffalo thread) and people were excited about the idea so here we are.
In that context, this thread (US outland) was started as a community for people who were still in step 1 and didn't know where their applications would go. We decided to start it with some FAQs to help new applicants and to centralize a lot of the posts we repeatedly shared with folks to answer their questions. Since that time, things have remained stable for US applicants applying outland through Ottawa so the information in the FAQs still remains largely applicable. There's been one addition to vehicle importation (you need to register the car for census purposes in the US) which we mention as people say they're going to start the process and, as you mention, we now know that the applications all ended up headed up CPP-Ottawa.
surleplateau said:
3. "Now that Buffalo . . . is closing and transferring functions to New York . . ." may as well add that now US Outland apps are going to Ottawa?
Unfortunately, no edits are allowed past ~24 hours on the forum so we couldn't add this bit in to the FAQs when it became known. As a result, you'll also see there's more than one version of the FAQs upfront (as we agreed on which additional topics should be added) and they aren't updateable but the hope is that people who start at the beginning will see that quickly. The people who are active have also changed over time but the information itself still seems largely relevant as rhcohen and rugrat mentioned.
rugrat907 said:
I agree. I found a lot of useful info in this thread and a new one would lead to a bunch of questions that have already been answered. I follow the CPC-Ottawa thread to see what kind of movement there is at that office, plus the individual months leading up to when I applied to see how things are moving. I get a fair number of notices for new replies to threads, but it's the best way to keep up on the activity of the visa office where my app will end up, and how fast (or slow) things are moving for people who applied before me.
Looking at CPP-Ottawa thread can be helpful as people seem to post timelines more there for some reason. However, whenever you look at the CPP-Ottawa thread, it's important to keep in mind that there's really multiple CPP-Ottawa's (i.e., multiple visa offices in CPP-Ottawa).
For example, IIRC, when the current CPP-Ottawa thread was started in late 2012 (there had been several CPP-Ottawa thread before then) it was focused on kicking off cases that had successfully been appealed and deemed to be low security risk, overflow for certain visa offices (e.g., Islamabad) to try to reduce backlogs, applications for visa offices that had closed due to emergencies (war and civil unrest situations), and running specific pilot programs. US outland applications were also handled in “CPP-Ottawa” (both new ones and the ones sent over from Buffalo). Our theory at the time was that it was an entirely new area with newly trained staff (at least the locally hired staff) because there was a long silence-filled hiatus before the US Outland “CPP-Ottawa” kicked-off processing.
As a result of this variety, people with “CPP-Ottawa” as a visa office can have very varying timelines. For example, when they handled a selection of family-class Islamabad cases, the timing was comparable to that of the Islamabad office (years) vs. Buffalo (months).
Hope that helps ;D
