The Saga Of The Canadian Visa Part I

Visa application for Canada opens, usually, in December each year. The application process takes about three months, but our work permits expired at the end of January, about seven weeks after we could have possibly started the application. The trouble was, as it was considered a new application, and not an extension, we needed to get a new Garda Clearance Certificate, which we only thought of once we saw the application forms. By the time we had that reissued it was mid-January when we couriered both applications to London at the cost of $80 for the swiftest mail service.

We got an email on February 8th confirming the receipt of our applications.

This meant that we knew in advance that we were going to be unemployable for a short while through February, March and even into April. But we were okay with this. We had a nice bit of savings, and could happily survive for a while without too much trouble, as long as we were careful with our expenditure and stuck to eating at home.

Unfortunately, we suffered a setback on March 1st when we both received an email informing us we had been rejected. As it turned out, we had missed a single signature at the bottom of a section that didn't apply to us, on an entire page that didn't apply to us. We had to restart everything again. Except we had, as required, sent away all our original documents. This meant that we had to get our Garda Clearance Certs reissued once again, and resubmit everything, double, triple and quadruple checking every signature, page, line and letter. In their defense, they did return the original, rejected documents, but it was still faster to get everything reissued.

Our second application was sent some time in early March. The notice of receipt arrived on March 23rd, but it took a full month before the acceptance email arrived, on April 23rd. Once accepted we were permitted to complete payment, which we did the very next day. The confirmation emails arrived within minutes, and that's when things got really complicated.

To Be Continued in Part II