Apply in Canada or in London??

[marting]

I am Canadian and live in London with my wife. We are planning to move to Canada (in 2008) and need to apply for a residence permit for her.

I understand we can either apply in London, or we can apply from within Canada. Are applications considered on the same basis?

What is the advantage of applying in London? If we apply from here and the application has not been fully processed, can we move to Canada and continue the application process from there?

If we just go to Canada and apply from there, is there any downside? Can she get on with life (get a job, go to school register for health plan), or do we need to wait until everything has been fully processed?

Any ideas would be appreciated!

[budda]

Hey Martin,

Basically I am in the same situation. My common law wife and I are moving asap. We have sent our forms off and awaiting reply.

What you have to do is get all the forms on the website. www.cic.gc.ca then fill them out, enclosing a police check and medical (very easy, taken in london at a cost of £200) You then send the 1st part of the forms off to Missisauga which take approx 1 months to process. This test your eligibility to sponsor your wife (this should also be easy). when this is processed the CIC would then send your forms to London for processing. the time frames in the london office on this are as follows:

30% of cases finalized in: 3 months
50% of cases finalized in: 4 months
70% of cases finalized in: 6 months
80% of cases finalized in: 8 months

If you fill the forms our correctly this should easily fall within these time frames, you the send off your wife's passport so they can stamp it etc, but i am not sure what happens if you move whilst in the process and School jobs etc maybe get complicated whilst on a working visa

If your wife goes to canada she will need a working Visa, which is only for 1 year.

I would recommend applying now. when you are successful you have one year from the accptance to then enter Canada, which means if you apply now and it all done and dusted by the latest end of this year you have loads of time to enter.

One last thing. When you there you wife will not be able to get subsidised health care or claim any benefits for i think 3 years and you are responsible for her. Obviously you just need to get insurance for her.

Hope this helps


Any question let me know

[newuser]

You'll have to sponsor her under the family class....
check www.cic.gc.ca for details.........basically first you will apply to sponsor her, and then CIC/Canadian visa office abroad will ask her to apply for permanent residence.