Over the years I have had to go to many Embassies, both for traveling visas; and for my work visas. The latest was the Canadian High Commission in London. We found the information on the internet a bit confusing.
After looking around the Immigration Division of the Canadian High Commission London page, a very badly laid out webpage, which is also extremely ugly and doesn’t fit with the important of the page, we managed to find the Citizenship and Immigration Canada webpage and found what we were looking for. It had a guide (which missed out a couple of details) and downloadable forms. The forms could be filled out inside Acrobat Reader which was a nice touch and made it a lot easier for us. Minutes later 2 forms were filled out and signed. Just too bad the forms insisted on only accepting American/Canadian formatted phone numbers, but you can’t get everything.
The High Commission’s opening hours start at 8am. We got up bright and early, took the train into London,but still by the time we got to the doors, it was 7:55am. We weren’t sure if I needed photographs (I did), so I decided to go find a place to have some taken. I expected to have a long time, because all embassies are really slow. By the time I got back, Karina was already inside, in line. She had also called me to tell me that they had their own photo booth onsite (Nice touch #2), but I had already had mine done in a booth at the local Tube station.
From here on it was clean sailing. For some silly reason I had assumed that the guide that said “Cash only” was wrong, so I had to run out in the middle to draw cash, but that was the only flaw. By 9:00am we were finished. Others took longer, but that is because they didn’t have the forms, and my advice to anyone doing a similar thing, fill out the forms at home.
The last nice touch was the work permit forms themselves. I had to give a fax number, and they said it would be with me within 10 working days. Unfortunately the fax number I gave would only be valid for 8 working days, so they said they couldn’t promise anything, but would mark it as priority. Little did I know, but at 3pm that day, the fax arrived, very prompt.
So in short, a good start to my life in Canada.
Posted by Gareth at February 1, 2004 12:47 PM | TrackBack