So I last left off informing you that I had received a notification of interest of provincial nomination from the province of Ontario. This was on November 13, 2015. I decided to remain in the pool for a couple of weeks to see if the points would drop and I could get an ITA, as it was going to take longer to go through the PNP route, not to mention it’s more expensive. Once you receive that Notification of Interest, you have 45 days to submit your application. Luckily, there was a draw on December 4, 2015 and the points came down and I got an ITA! The points were 461 and we had 469. Needless to say I was thrilled. I had until February 2, 2016 to submit my application.
I was pretty organized before even creating my EE profile and was in the process of gathering all of my employment reference letters, police certificates etc. So once we received our ITA, I was almost ready to submit everything, except for the medicals. For obtaining police clearance from Ireland, it’s all outlined online regarding what you should submit to them http://garda.ie/Controller.aspx?Page=2742&Lang=1 . Like all of us, I had to submit a police check from Ireland before I got my 2 year IEC Visa so my sister just brought in a copy of that to our local garda station and asked for an updated one and it came back within a week. For the medical, you must see a physician that is on the list of approved panel physicians. You can find that list here: http://www.cic.gc.ca/pp-md/pp-list.aspx . For anyone in Toronto, I went to Dr. Li Francis, near Pape Station. No appointment is necessary, they do the medicals every morning between 9-11am, however, if you go on a Saturday morning, be prepared to wait. We arrived at 8.45am and there was already a queue outside. The full cost of the medical is $260 including the x-rays. I think it was $200 for the medical and $60 for the x-ray and we were there for a total of 2 hours. Please don’t forget that if you are applying under common law, both you and your partner/spouse must undergo the medical. As you are leaving the clinic they will give you a print off with a bar code on it and that is the document that you upload with your application. The clinic will then send the results directly to CIC (online I believe) and it takes about 2 weeks.*UPDATE* This doctor has been removed from the approved list of physicians as he has been charged with sexual assault of one of his female patients. If anyone has any information or if there are more victims out there you should call police at 416-808-7474 or Crime Stoppers anonymously at 416-222-8477. http://www.insidetoronto.com/news-story/6724918-toronto-doctor-charged-in-connection-with-sex-assault-of-female-patient-in-pape-danforth-area/
The other thing that I hadn’t considered was the common law union declaration, this appeared in the list of required documents. You can print the form off online, you should get a link to the form in your list of required documents. You must get it signed and stamped by a Notary Public. We used David Mrejen located at 2 Bloor Street East, and it cost $89 in total, although I’m sure there are cheaper ones out there. You also need to provide evidence of cohabitation for at least 12 months. This can included copies of lease agreements, evidence of joint bank accounts, utility bills.
You also need a letter from your bank detailing when you opened your account and how much you have in there, along with copies of statements for the past 6 months. I used statements for my chequing account and also provided statements for our joint account for the past 6 months. The banks should be aware of this letter, I’m with CIBC and went I asked about it they knew exactly what it was and I had it within about a week.
You need to provide employment reference letters for all employments which you got points for in order to get your ITA. If you need to collect a few of these letters, I advise that you start gathering them early, even before you get the ITA. The employment letters have to include very specific information:
- should be an official document printed on company letterhead (must include the applicant’s name, the company’s contact information [address, telephone number and email address], and the name, title and signature of the immediate supervisor or personnel officer at the company),
- should indicate all positions held while employed at the company and must include the following details: job title, duties and responsibilities, job status (if current job), dates worked for the company, number of work hours per week and annual salary plus benefits;
If possible, I would also have the relevant NOC mentioned in the reference letter. I’m not sure if it’s necessary or not, but my NOC was in my reference letter for my current role. As part of the application you have to give you personal history, travel history and work history for the past 10 years or since you were 18 (whichever is most recent). I found the travel history section particularly difficult as I’ve done my fair share of travelling so I had to go back through all my stamps in my passport to get the dates of entry and exist to different countries. I didn’t include any EU trips as I had no idea of dates of those trips and there are no stamps in my passport relating to them, so I’m hoping that will be okay. For US trips there is a website that you can use to get your entry/exit days. I didn’t know about this until after I submitted my application but I think it will come in handy for many: https://i94.cbp.dhs.gov/I94/consent.html;jsessionid=7K5LW2wQD4rv0Vj216dLw1nGRLhF3th0d5WnDYwvJT0qRLp7Dnqh!1808615784
The address history was another one I found tricky as I have lived at so many addresses both in Ireland, and in other countries. I couldn’t remember my address from when I did my J1 Visa in San Diego and then also there have been times when I’ve been travelling for a couple of months with no fixed abode. In these cases I reverted back to my home address in Ireland. If you are having trouble remembering all past addresses in Ireland, be sure to at least cover those that are mentioned in your Irish Garda clearance letter. Make sure when filling in the address history, travel history etc that it is all in chronological order and that you leave absolutely no gaps.
For the photographs you can provide a digital photo. I used Photo Imaging at Yonge and Bloor and I have to say they were great, they are well used to doing pictures for people applying for PR and knew exactly when I needed. He saved the pic onto my USB key. It’s located at 2 Bloor Street West, I can’t remember exactly what it cost but it wasn’t too expensive.
When uploading the documents, there is a section that asks for your education – degree certificates. I scanned my degree certs along with my WES ECA as all one document so that I could upload them all as one document. I think sometimes people have only uploaded their degree cert and then they are contacted later to provide their ECA, so it’s better to just upload it in the first instance to save time. Also, in the required documents section they don’t ask for your English test results. I uploaded my IELTS results along with my letter of explanation to save time so that I won’t be asked to provide it later. My letter of explanation was in relation to my South Korean police certificate, as I mentioned in my previous blog I had a hard time trying to get that, and in the end I’m still not sure it was the right one so I just included a letter explained everything I did to try to obtain the right police certificate.
I submitted and paid for our application on December 22, 2015. It was $2,080 in total for the two of us, although I believe if your application is denied, you are refunded the right of permanent residence fee ($980 in total – $490 each). Also, you aren’t required to pay that fee when you are submitting your application, you can pay it later but I decided to pay everything at once.
I received the AOR (Acknowledgement of Receipt) on December 22, 2015 (the same day that I submitted the application) and since then it’s been radio silence. I did get one of those ghost emails that tell you that your application has been updated but when I checked nothing had changed. That was on January 22, 2016. Right now, when I log into CIC my application status is as follows:
Once again, I will do another post once we get PR (fingers crossed) outlining the process from now until actually receiving PR. Until next time 🙂