So yesterday was our second attempt at getting my husband’s permanent residency. Instead of being 1/2 hour early like last time, we were a full hour early. You would think there would have been less people, and though there may have been a little less, there were still quite a few people there. My thoughts were quite honestly: “How early do these people come in the morning?”
We were fortunate in the fact that almost every single one of those people were there to write their citizenship tests. We were actually the first ones in line for the immigration interview, which of course meant after the office finally opened and officers finally showed up to do interviews, we were the first ones called in.
It was nothing like what I had expected! We showed the officer our papers (receipts, passport, letter, pictures) and she asked us 3 questions each: Have you ever been asked to leave Canada? (My equivalent was where I was born), Do you have any dependents? and Have you been convicted of a crime in Canada? We only had the one incident where the border patrol and immigration didn’t agree when my husband was told he should leave by the border patrol but was told he never should have left by immigration, and I was a little worried about that. But I do know and firmly believe it is better to be honest than try to hide something. So I was anxious at this point to see what she would say which turned out to be nothing other than “So they asked you to leave and then asked you to come back?” Yup. That’s pretty much it.
She entered a lot of things into the computer, printed some papers, asked if we had any questions for her, signed some papers, was instructed on the steps from here, and was out of her office by 9:30 with proof of residency for my husband! Ahhhh!!!! For those of you who have been following our 2 1/2 year struggle with Immigration, this was such a happy day for us! He can’t leave the country yet as we still have to wait for his PR card to come in the mail, but that paper is proof and promise that it is coming and he can finally go see his family this summer. I’m so excited!!!