ITA Received!!

We got our ITA!!! WOO HOO!!!

For those of you not totally up to date in immigration terminology that means “Invitation to Apply” This is an invitation extended from the Canadian Government to Apply for Permanent Residency. Although this is not a complete guarantee of being able to stay forever, it’s not bloody far off!!

We are so excited. All these years of trying, all these years of filling in forms and putting in the hours of work! It has paid off.

Saying that… On the date we received our ITA, the Canadian government also sent out 27,000 other ITAs. One of the biggest draws in history. Rumor has it that they have such a high immigration target for 2021, and such a big back log of applicants that they basically sent it to everyone in the pool.

Fine by me, as long as we are included. But I think it’s safe to assume that processing time Is going to be a lot longer than usual!

From the date of receiving our ITA (Saturday 13^th February) we now have 90 days to submit the rest of our application. We must include documents to support everything we have stated in our express entry profile, We must have a full medical, blood tests and obtain police reports for every country we have spent more than 6 months in.

For Henry, Rocket and I think means a $650 medical for the three of us, Blood tests to be taken a week or so later which I am sure will not be cheap. Police reports from the UK cost up to 95 pounds and can take a month to arrive. We also need them from Austria as Henry and I have spent so much time there. For the Austrian report we have to go to the embassy in Calgary (Which is only open between 1-5pm on a Wednesday) and apply in person. We ALSO need it for France because we have spent so much time there visiting my parents – believe it or not, that’s the easy one, you apply online, it’s free and it takes 2 days! – Go figure Once we have all of these things we should be ready to rock!

So here we go… we will get all of these things done as soon as we can, hand it over to our lawyers and then……..

We wait!

Now it’s time for the fun bit…….HOUSE HUNTING!!! The Curtis family are here to stay!