{"id":2472,"date":"2006-03-25T09:28:47","date_gmt":"2006-03-25T14:28:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scruss.com\/blog\/2006\/03\/25\/1656-days-from-pr-application-to-canadian-citizenship\/"},"modified":"2011-01-10T15:01:35","modified_gmt":"2011-01-10T20:01:35","slug":"1656-days-from-pr-application-to-canadian-citizenship","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/scruss.com\/blog\/2006\/03\/25\/1656-days-from-pr-application-to-canadian-citizenship\/","title":{"rendered":"1656 days from PR application to Canadian Citizenship"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I found my old <a href=\"news:\/\/misc.immigration.canada\">misc.immigration.canada<\/a> post where I gave the <a href=\"http:\/\/groups.google.ca\/group\/misc.immigration.canada\/browse_thread\/thread\/298db71691ffb13c\/71199ee8187ea70e\">timeline of our application<\/a>. I&#8217;ve now got a few dates to add to that line:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>01 Jun 2001: Sent forms with all fees<br \/>\n13 Jun 2001:  Receipt acknowledged<br \/>\n26 Jun 2001: Medical forms and interview waiver received<br \/>\n07 Aug 2001: Took medicals<br \/>\n01 Sep 2001: Visas received<br \/>\n02 Apr 2002: Arrived in Canada<br \/>\n18 Mar 2006: Took citizenship<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>It&#8217;s been hard work, but worth it. Canada&#8217;s a decent place to live.<\/p>\n<p>Some observations on how immigration worked for us:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>We did the application ourselves; all you need is on <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cic.gc.ca\/\">cic.gc.ca<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>Research ways of getting your money into Canada without incurring swingeing foreign exchange charges. This was perhaps our single biggest cost, and I&#8217;m sure we could have avoided some of it.<\/li>\n<li>Canadian banks are rather stuffy and inefficient. Expect to pay bank charges, and also expect the &#8220;free banking&#8221; banks to turn you down until you have a credit history.<\/li>\n<li>It takes several years to become credit worthy in Canada. It took about a year before we had a credit card at all.<\/li>\n<li>Get to know and love your public transit system. Most Canadian cities have decent transit, and living near a busy transit hub gets you around quickly.<\/li>\n<li>Join the library. Books, internet access, and information of what&#8217;s happening \u00e2\u20ac\u201d and free, too.<\/li>\n<li>Owning a car is quite expensive. It&#8217;s not the purchase price or the fuel cost; insurance for new immigrants with no insurance record is unbelievable. If your employer can put you on their policy to drive one of their vehicles, you&#8217;ll find that it&#8217;ll cut your insurance premiums drastically.<\/li>\n<li>I ended up changing jobs more than I thought I might.<\/li>\n<li>Volunteering helped me get into the industry I really wanted to be in.<\/li>\n<li>Professional qualifications don&#8217;t import well. Ontario is getting a bit better at accepting foreign qualifications (my UK CEng counted for nothing) but there&#8217;s still a long way to go.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Not long after we arrived, I remember being slightly irritated when a fellow UK immigrant said, &#8220;<em>The first three years are difficult, then it gets easy.<\/em>&#8221; Looking back, I now agree with him.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I found my old misc.immigration.canada post where I gave the timeline of our application. I&#8217;ve now got a few dates to add to that line: 01 Jun 2001: Sent forms with all fees 13 Jun 2001: Receipt acknowledged 26 Jun 2001: Medical forms and interview waiver received 07 Aug 2001: Took medicals 01 Sep 2001: [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[10,15],"tags":[1200,188,1745,319],"class_list":["post-2472","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-o-canada","category-the-old-country","tag-canada","tag-citizenship","tag-immigration","tag-visa"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pQNZZ-DS","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/scruss.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2472","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/scruss.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/scruss.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scruss.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scruss.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2472"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/scruss.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2472\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6024,"href":"https:\/\/scruss.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2472\/revisions\/6024"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/scruss.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2472"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scruss.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2472"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scruss.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2472"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}