POE Thousand Islands

[redmen99 1]

Our day yesterday started with loading the U-Haul moving truck. We called to book it and got a 40% discount on the truck and a 30% discount on the car hauler so the total rental one way from Oshawa, Ontario to Lansdale, PA was under $400 including mileage and we got a free storage unit for a month which we needed, so that was a great deal!

So we picked up the truck around 10 am and started unloading his storage unit and loading up the truck. We finished loading around 1. Had to go back to the Uhaul dealer to put the car hauler on, so we finally started on the road about 2. My goal was to make it across the border by 4, yep, that didn't happen.

We finally pulled up to the border around 5:30. My hubby told them he was activating his CR-1 Visa and that he needed to import his car. So we were asked to move the truck to secondary and go in.

We went in and sat down and he was called up a few minutes later by Office Barkley who asked the hubby some questions (where do you live, what's in the truck, any alcohol, tobacco, firearms), had him read and sign a form about how to get the 10 year greencard, then asked for me to come up and read and sign the form. He asked us to take a seat, then he process more paperwork. Asked the hubbs to come back up about 10 minutes later, asked the hubbs to sign a paper that will be his signature on his green card, took his fingerprint with ink, then told him he could go use the washroom if he wanted to wash his hands. Had him sit back down. Called us both up again, asked a few more questions, he gave me a copy of the I-485 along with instructions and told me to hold onto it. He said we were done and we could go. I asked what about importing the car? Officer Barkley said "Well you could have told me THAT 45 minutes ago!" We apologized and said that we told the guy outside and thought he told you. So we started the import process, and he asked if the car had an EPA Compliant sticker or if we had a letter from the manufacturer. I told him we requested the letter, but that it didn't come in yet. He said well, you can come back and import it later if you want and said we could go to any border entry to do it and then he asked if the car had the sticker and we were not sure. He said, well I'm not going to go look for it, but if you want to go ahead and look and come right back, I'll do the paperwork. So we looked and found it under the hood (thankfully) and a guard outside confirmed that is what they needed to see, so Office Barkley went ahead and did the paperwork to import the car. He needed to see the title and asked questions about the car when he was looking up the value on Kelly Blue Book. He asked us if there was duty on importing a car, and I told them not in this case. He is allowed to import a car fee of duty with an immigration visa. After the paperwork was done, he told us that he still needs the letter from the manufacturer and when we receive it, we should mail the original to him.

The total process took about an hour and a half and was fairly painless. My hubby was extremely grateful that he got his car imported and didn't have to worry about a 6 hour drive at another time to import it. And don't you know, the email came over with the letter from Mazda at 5:45 pm lastnight... right when we were in Secondary! We even said that to the Officer when he asked why we didn't get it yet when we requested it almost 3 weeks ago. What a fiasco!

We finally made it home around 1 am... What a long day it was, about 12 hours on the road! Its pretty bad when you are driving on the highway up a hill and you are getting passed by all kinds of tractor trailers cause the darn thing won't go faster then 45 up a major hill with all that weight in it!

Now comes the real fun part. Co-mingling of the belongings! Wish us luck!

[Pauley 2]

Outside of the mild snafu with the car import, sounds like things went pretty smoothly! Congrats on POE :-D

[Kimbear 53]

Grats on the POE..wow 11 hours that was a long day. Get some well deserved rest Redmen!

[Wyatt's Torch 45]

Good stuff, Redmen! I'll make a mental note to mention that I'm importing my car.

[Married2009 32]

Grats, Redmen on getting your hubby home! Glad his POE was painless.

[minnew 4]

Congrats on a succesful POE!! Now go relax with your hubby what a long day for you!

[Obama 2012 1,714]

Congrats!

[JMilroy 0]

congrats on the POE!...I'm going through the thousand islands tommorow for mine. Quick question...Do you pull up to the customs booth like people normally do and just tell them your activating a visa or is there a place to drive into before getting to those actual border/customs booths on the road..Thanks:)

[lgg 2]

Congrats!

I just finished co-mingling all our stuff! It wasn't so bad at all, I just pushed all his stuff out of the way!

j/k

Good luck and happy to hear that you made it safe and sound.

[Peachey 10]

WELCOME TO PENNSYLVANIA!!!!!!!!!!

Also, car import thing, you can go to any point of entry, including the Philadelphia international airport. I have to get to Harrisburg airport sometime to get them to finish my paperwork.

[OBX 51]

Congratulations! Now it's time to rest and relax.

[sdw 10]

Congrats

[Kathryn41 3,205]

congrats on the POE!...I'm going through the thousand islands tommorow for mine. Quick question...Do you pull up to the customs booth like people normally do and just tell them your activating a visa or is there a place to drive into before getting to those actual border/customs booths on the road..Thanks:)

Good luck tomorrow. Yes, you pull up to the customs booth and say you are activating your visa. They will put a sticker on your window and direct you to secondary inspection where you will park the vehicle and go inside.

[BriCar 0]

Yaaaay!!

Welcome to the USA!

Say we plan to move the same way when our turn comes.

How did you get the u-haul discounts?

[sdw 10]

congrats on the POE!...I'm going through the thousand islands tommorow for mine. Quick question...Do you pull up to the customs booth like people normally do and just tell them your activating a visa or is there a place to drive into before getting to those actual border/customs booths on the road..Thanks:)

Go up like you normally would and tell them you need to activate your visa.