Emigration update 12.04.2021

It’s been a little while since I have found the time to write about what we have been up to over here. Life has been a hectic balance of finalizing our PR application, selling our house, buying a new house, and trying to have some fun adventures as we go.

As of today, we have submitted all our “stuff” for the PR application and now we sit and wait again as they review all our paperwork and finalize. Were expecting it to take forever. I will be impressed if we get our cards this side of Christmas.

This post is a little bit about what we have had to do since getting our invitation for PR so that anyone who is near this stage can prepare themselves. And for those friends and family members back home in England to know what we have had to do to get to where we are.

Since receiving our ITA on February 13^th the clock has been ticking to get all the admin completed within the 90-day cut off.

Police Certificates: The most urgent task was police certificates because they can take a long time to come though. If you have spent more then 60 days in a country then they require a certificate to say you haven’t committed any crimes during your time there. (seems fair)

                UK: (This is the 3^rd time Henry and I have had to get UK police certificates) This time, living in Canada already, we opted for the speedy service because they have to post it to you and we all know how totally crap the post system is here. At 100 pounds a pop this wasn’t cheap but at least we knew we would get it in time. If you go to https://www.acro.police.uk you can apply online and it’s a fairly pain free service (until you have to pay the bill) ours took about 2 weeks to get to us.

                France: My mum and dad live in France so we have spent a lot of time over there over the years. Believe it or not this was the most painless one. You apply online, its FREE and you get it within 24 hours to your inbox. Amazing. Go to this website https://casier-judiciaire.justice.gouv.fr/pages/accueil.xhtml and your done. Fantastic.

                Austria: Henry and I have spent a lot of time in Austria from ski seasons to multiple ski trips. This was the biggest pain to sort. We had to go to the Austrian embassy in Calgary with all our documentation, sit in an office and prove we are real humans, pay $130 for the pleasure AND we had to go and buy our own bloody envelopes for them to post the certificates to us when they were done! The Austrian Embassy is only open Wednesday afternoons from 1pm-5pm. ….. fun times!

BUT, we did them all and some of you may be surprised to know that we are squeaky clean and there wasn’t a mark on us in any country. (smug)

Medical: As part of your application you need a full medical, chest xray and blood test. Now usually this would not be so urgent but as they sent an ITA to 30k people we wanted to get in there quick as there are only certain doctors offices that are approved by the Canadian government to do this. Gettign a booking was tight so we had to be on it straight away.

We went to “My Calgary Doctor” and all three of us had to do a full physical including urine samples and a billion and one questions, prods and pokes and a fun time waiting in waiting rooms with a toddler. This cost us $800 for the three of us. And it has to be cash!! WTF! (something weird about that to me)

Henry and I then had to, on the same day, go to Mayfair diagnostics and have a chest x-ray (Another $130)

THEN – Henry and I had to go and have a blood test in Cochrane (Another $50)

This was a fun one as that same week Henrys boss caught covid so we both had to go and have a covid test on the same day as the blood test, so we were quarantined in little rooms while they decided what to do with us (We did not have covid – just did it so we could get back to work and we knew Rocket was safe)

So, after all that forking out money to be “looked at” by doctors, we don’t see any of the results and just count that as ticking something off the list.

Admin: Finally, the endless pile of admin is still on going.

• Letters of employment from every job you have ever had (queue awkward conversations with previous employers)
• Every time you have left the country since you were 18 years old (that was a fun one)
• Filling in forms dating every fart you have done since you were 18
• Scanning paperwork
• Photos, photos and more photos
• Payslips
• Proof of employment
• Bla bla bla bla bla

THANK GOD we hired someone who actually knows that they are doing with all this stuff because it is pretty overwhelming to say the least.

I’ve praised them before and I will again. If you are emigrating then we highly recommend CanDo Immigration in Kelowna. Besty and Jamie are our case workers and they have been great.

So there you are, that’s a boring emigration post for you.

Fun stores and activities to follow 😊 Here’s a photo of Rocket having lunch on Medical day to make it more interesting.

• Note – since receiving our ITA I can now sleep, the general daily panic has calmed down and I generally feel much calmer (luckily for Henry)

Big Kiss

xxx