Interview & CRBA all in one day

[CarolinaGirl 2]

I wanted to post in case anyone has a similar situation and is wondering like I was. We had our interview for my husbands IR1 visa on Wednesday May 9th and since we live on Vancouver Island and it's costly to take the ferry to Vancouver we wanted to apply for our 9 month old's CRBA at the same time. We arrived early (6:45am) and were 4th in line. Two of the people ahead of us had bags that were too large and they were turned away at the door. We ended up getting number C1 (thanks VJ for all the elevator and seating tips, couldn't have done it without you!) We were all done by 9am and were plenty in time for our CRBA appointment at 9:30am. Overall things went smoothly even though we didn't end up getting the visa OR the CRBA.

We expected to run into issues with domicile since I'm still living in Canada(USC). We didn't want to split our family up if we didn't have to and since I'm not planning on going back to work they said that all we need to mail in is proof that my husband(Canadian Citizen) is seeking employment in the US, and his signed letter of resignation. They asked us to send back in those 2 things with his passport and we would be done.

My understanding is that in most cases they are looking for proof of a job and such from the USC, but in our case understood that I am not working and don't intend to return to work and so instead are looking for this kind of information from him. It's quite a relief actually since we knew that there would be a chance that I would be required to move to the US before they would approve the visa and we weren't looking forward to having our baby away from her Daddy for several months.

For the CRBA I hadn't realized until the last minute that I needed to prove that I had lived in the US for 5 years(naively I thought they would somehow know that I had lived their until I was 27) So again I just have to mail in some proof of that and it will be issued. Overall it was worth the trip though and we should soon have all the things we need to mail in and perhaps be done with this process for good!

Thanks again everyone for all of the tips, we would have been horribly under-prepared if I hadn't found this haven! Now I'm starting my Canadian Citizenship application process so it seems the fun will never end!

[CarolinaGirl 2]

Oh and also my husband and I drove down to the US today(Sarnia/Port Huron POE) to do some shopping and we had no problem at the border. The fact that we are in the middle of immigration was never mentioned by the border guard. I had thought that it would pop up on the screen when they scanned his passport and say that he had applied to immigrate but we were asked hardly any questions and made it through very smoothly.

[pocheros 101]

Glad the process went relatively smoothly Congrats!