Canadian Residents

It finally happened! Our paper work is finally over and done with, and we're officially Canadian Residents.

The process has taken almost three years, a ton of paper but mostly just waiting around. A couple of months ago we got our temporary visas which enabled us to go to Canada and "land", but it hasn't been until now that we've had the time to do anything about it.

The final part of the process was almost a sort of an anti-climax. With the amount of information we've given them, the medical test etc. we were expecting to be questioned for hours on end, and having to yet again show various types of documentation and proof of sufficient funds. That didn't happen though, and the whole thing took less than 15 minutes. I think we were even through immigration faster than some of the other people on our plane...

When we got off the plane and headed towards immigration and passport control, we were so focused on getting to the people we had to see as quickly as possible, as we expected it to take quite a while and we had family waiting for us in the arrivals hall. Once we got the the passport control area, we looked for something that said immigration or similar and found a counter for "Special Services" or something. That sounded like the one for us plus it didn't have any queue. The guy behind the counter looked quite strangely at us and asked why we were there, so we explained that we were there to officially land. He smiled a bit and said that we've actually taken the line for people with disabilities...ups...but now that we were there and no one else were waiting he might as well check our import form and tell us where to go next. Nice guy :). Next area was actually for immigration, and/or people with special visas I think, and the guys there welcomed us to Canada and asked us to take a seat in some chairs a bit further down, and someone would be with us shortly. Having waited less than 2 minutes, a lady asked us to come in to her cubicle and we handed her our special form that we were told to bring. She only asked a few questions about kids etc. and crossed out a few things on the form before we were asked to sign it several places. For proof of funds she just needed a ballpark-figure of how much we had available...and that was it!

Se voided our temporary "landing" visas and gave us new temporary ones (as we're not moving yet) and told us to stop by another lady further down the room for a welcoming package. Oh yeah...we need to let the Canadian authorities know where to send our new permanent resident cards, but otherwise we're free to live and work in Canada :) Now we just need to figure out when to actually move there, and where to move....