To obtain a Canadian visa requires a
lot of patience. In further blog entries you can read exactly how
much patience is needed not to lose your mind.
In this post we will
talk about our journey to obtain visas: what we did, how cumbersome
it is, which things you need and how long it takes. This post can be
boring for some, helpful to others, but a visa post belongs to an
emigration overseas blog :D
An additional function of this post is
so that we can laugh about the whole thing in a couple of years while
reading it all back in our suburbian home near the woods in Canada
(much more about our Canadian house in a following post).
We started the whole procedure
immediately after we heard to news that Dirk could start his Ph.D. in
Canada. In other words, in March 2013 we began. Our journey started
with a lot of research. We knew that we had to apply for a student
visa for Dirk and a open work permit for Marjolein.
To gain information a logical first
step it to consult the Canadian immigration centre website:
But much better information we found on
forums and blogs from other Dutch and Belgian immigrants to Canada.
The CIC website is complex, chaotic and incomplete. So we read
everything on these forums:
We found out that we needed the
following stuff to obtain our visas.
1. A common law partnership (since
Marjolein is coming with Dirk to Canada)
For this, we needed to collect proof of
being together for more then a year. This proof can be pictures,
common bank account, common insurance, rental contract and the likes.
We found out that you can also use your address history as proof.
Since we've live together for more than four years, obtaining a
common law status shouldn’t be a problem, we thought. Wrong!
First we needed to obtain our address
history. Since we lived in Belgium, we needed to ask the municipality
of Maastricht (the Netherlands) to send the information in English to
us. I can tell you that it wasn’t easy to get the right info at
once. Several emails and wrong documents later, it was June when we
received everything we needed. In Dutch... In short it took a month
to receive the address history
As soon as we got all the documents we
went to the municipality of Brussels to let them sign our statutory
declaration of common law union (form IMM5409). Dead end. They didn’t
want to sign the forms. First we had to apply for a common law status
in Belgium before we could become common law partners in Canada. This
would take up some time. After some research we found out that a
notary could sign the form as well. We paid 30 euros for the
signature.
For our common law status to be valid abroad, the address history needed to be translated by a sworn translator. Such a translator for non-business related inquiries is hard to find. Luckily, I knew a few people from university who study at the language faculty. Within a day we found the right translator: he would fix the job within a week and asked 120 euros for his work. As we opened the envelope a week later, just one out of eight documents had been translated. HORROR. We found out that the court had given the wrong file to the translator, meaning we had to wait another week and it was already June.
For our common law status to be valid abroad, the address history needed to be translated by a sworn translator. Such a translator for non-business related inquiries is hard to find. Luckily, I knew a few people from university who study at the language faculty. Within a day we found the right translator: he would fix the job within a week and asked 120 euros for his work. As we opened the envelope a week later, just one out of eight documents had been translated. HORROR. We found out that the court had given the wrong file to the translator, meaning we had to wait another week and it was already June.
2. Student permit
To obtain a student permit Dirk needed:
- letter of acceptance from the
faculty.
- proof of financial support.
- proof of being legally in Belgium,
since we where Dutch immigrants.
Marjolein already obtained official
status in Belgium for her study's but Dirk never officially
registered. Dutch people moving to Belgium know how frustrating it is
to register, especially living in Brussels. It takes up to a half
year and is a complex procedure. Long story short: Dirk needed to
register officially in Brussels to get the needed proof for his
visum. This didn’t work at all, cost a lot of time, and made the
whole visa situation a lot more complicated than it already was. We
just gave up after all the trouble in Brussels. In June we officially
registered ourselves as citizens of The Netherlands to avoid any more
complications.
3. Work permit
Marjolein needed to fill in a lot of
forms. A LOT.
No proof needed since she applied for
an open work permit. This basically means that she can work for a
period of four years (the length of Dirk's study) wherever she wants.
Applying for an open work permit is much easier than a work permit.
For the latter, you need to arrange an employer in Canada.
Within this whole visa process,
Marjolein wrote her massive thesis (min. 30,000 words) and we needed
to move to The Netherlands. The first of August. Can you imagine the
stress level?
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| StressOmeter: We where in the red zone! |
4. Further stuff we needed
- Photos with official measurements and
restrictions (cannot really explain; we just took the photos
ourselves and hoped for the best)
- Diplomas
- Lots of other documents
Finally, finally, finally! At the July
22 we obtained everything we needed and then we found out that we
couldn’t directly pay to the Canadian visa office (which is located
in Austria) for our application if we send everything in by post.
After some phone calls, nobody could tells us how to pay for
everything (120 euro's). This happened a few days before Marjolein's
thesis deadline.
We decided to apply online, which would
be a lot faster and easier. Plus, we could pay by credit card. July
23 was the day. (We are not joking on this one.) It was so
complicated that Dirk worked a whole day on the online application.
We had to fill in new documents, takes pictures of everything, make
the stupid special photo's, upload all this, make an account, upload
digital versions of the paper documents we already filled out and
scanned... At night we were done and had paid for everything, What a
freaking relieve! We calculated that we would receive our visas 30
days later, at the end of August. Just in time for Dirk's first
semester.
BOY WHERE WE WRONG! We are still stuck
in the Netherlands and its now September 12. More on the CIC and visa
complications in another, specific post.
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| This image indicates our current emotion level |
