Hello fellow Bloggers :)

I can see that it's been awhile since anyone has added to the blog, so I'll take a few minutes and give you all an update.

My immigration process is still, well in the process... James and I finally got all of our paperwork together and the novel of a package was sent out June 16, 2009 and was mailed out including a tracking# which was received 2 days later at the Immigration office in Mississagua, Ontario.

All fees have been paid for already and the info on our receipt is the info we use to log in and check the online status. Naturally we checked every couple of days to see that nothing was updated. But 4 weeks later a different screen appeared and new information was available! Since James is my Sponsor, his part of the paperwork gets looked at first... His application was looked at on July 18, 2009 and a decision was made July 20. 2009 Sponsor Approved!!

Now that James is all set, it's time they look into my large portion of the paperwork, proof, and the whole package gets sent to Buffalo, NY for further processing. Within 8 days I receive a confirmation letter stating that our application has in fact reached the Buffalo Office and has not been assessed yet...

Which brings us to the currant time... Naturally James and I have been fixating and speculating this rest of the process and how it might play out... Checking the official Canadian Visa website and making sure the processing time hasn't changed for the worse. We are hoping for the best case scenario which looks to be about 4 months.

James took the extra step and separated each section with a paperclip and attached a sticky note that indicates what's included in each section. We are hoping that his extra effort speeds thing up a bit. As we figure there are many people that may not organize their paperwork as well as we did, and that may hold up their process. That, and many people are immigrating from other countries that don't use English or French as their primary language, and they need everything translated and notarized, which again holds up the process. There are also those families that have children, and that means more paperwork to process and more time to sort things out.

So that's pretty much what's been going through our heads lately. At the moment James is back down in the US until August 23, then it's back to Ottawa for him. We figure that we'll be waiting for a few weeks before we get any sort of update from immigration. So in the meantime, he'll go back to Canada and make room in his grandparent's basement for the things I'm planning to take with me.

As far as I can tell and have read, My traveling will be kept to a minimum as my Passport will be requested... my guess is that my visa will be attached and sent back to me so that when I cross the border for the last time, They will know I have "Landing" paperwork waiting and a list of itemized belongings to check in.

Only time will tell really... But things are looking good!