Travel Document – processed

Email received today:

From: visaapplicationalert@vfshelpline.com

Dear Applicant,

We would like to inform you that your processed passport has been dispatched from the Canada Visa Office, on 23 Jul 2013 to the Canada Visa Application Centre.
You can track the status of your application through our website mentioned below using your tracking number.
Tracking Number: [number]
http://www.vfsglobal.ca/canada

Best Regards,
Canada Visa Application Centre,London
LONDON

Could that be everything done and my Travel Document (and related documents) is on its way?

Packing and painting

We’re planning to rent the flat out part-furnished for a while – at least until we know we’re settled in Vancouver and to allow the market to pick up a bit more (Tim bought the flat basically a week before the crash!).

We’ve been getting rid of stuff and reorganising for the past wee while, then spent this weekend ferrying stuff to and from our storage unit, the tip, charity shops and my parent’s house (my sister has just bought a flat and will be getting various bits of our furniture for it).

Yesterday, we got the British Heart Foundation to pick up some large bits of furniture that otherwise would have gone to the tip (sofabed, bookshelves etc). If you’re getting rid of furniture in Aberdeen, I would highly recommend the BHF collection service – booked online on Friday, phone call confirmation on Saturday, two guys in a van on Monday (after phoning my mobile when they were 30 minutes away, so I could get home from work), done in 10 minutes! Instant Neighbour were booked up all this week and Barnardo’s could only manage on Wednesday.

Tim’s parents very generously offered to come up to Aberdeen for a few days and paint everything, so we spent last night moving things away from the walls and generally making things easier to shift around.

So 29 days to go and the flat is looking bare.

In happier news, Miss 604 has just published the list of events for August and it’s really weird to realise that we’ll be actually in the city for some of them!

Busy day!

So first, I was a numpty and didn’t sign one section of the Family Information Sheet, so VAC emailed me to get me to do it.

Then they gave me a tracking number:

From: visaapplicationalert@vfshelpline.com 

Dear Applicant, 

We would like to inform you that your application has been processed in our office on 23 Jul 2013 

You can track the status of your application through our website mentioned below using your tracking number.
Tracking Number: [number]
http://www.vfsglobal.ca/canada  

Best Regards,
Canada Visa Application Centre, London

Then they phoned to ask if Tim needed his passport back quickly or if they should just return it with the rest. I said returning it in one bundle would be fine, so then they emailed me again to confirm:

From: interpost.canuk@vfshelpline.com 

Dear Applicant,

Your application has been processed and this is your tracking id: [number]

Your application will be forwarded to the High Commission of Canada

You can track your application at the website below

The 6-digit auth. code number for the telephonic card transaction; [number]

The royal mail tracking number is [number]

Please note: the centre confirms the reciept of the applicant’s husband’s original Canadian passport, and as confirmed with the applicant over the phone. It will be returned along with the other document and/paspport with the finalized outcome.

For further information please visit our website www.vfsglobal.ca/Canada/UnitedKingdom or contact our call centre on  0203 608 6880.

Kind Regards,

--------
Service Desk for Applications via International Post
--------
VFS GLOBAL
EST. 2001 | Partnering Governments. Providing Solutions.

Canada Visa Application Centre
1st Floor, The Battleship Building, 179 Harrow Road, London, W2 6NB
--------
[BTW, this is just copied and pasted from their email, so they’re not my spelling mistakes!]

Now I understand what and why VFS are doing – they’re basically the clearing house for the High Commission. They do all the admin and chasing up forms and payments, so that the High Commission just receives full files, ready to process.

Anyway, my application is on its way now, so fingers crossed!

Travel Document – missing things

Well, I checked the Royal Mail tracking site this morning and my application had been received by the VAC. However, I’ve just received an email from them, saying that I’m missing a form and payment of the VFS fee – I’ve paid the visa fee, just not their fee for processing it.

Although I’m cross that I missed these bits, I’m really pleased by the response time from the VAC:

• Sat 20th – Posted for delivery on Monday before 1pm
• Mon 22nd – Tracked as delivered
• 10.03am, Tues 23rd – VAC emailed 
• 10.35am – I replied with the scanned form and my phone number
• 10.46am – VAC phoned for payment

Also, I appreciate that they emailed me, I was able to email them a scanned copy of the form, and they phoned me for payment by credit card. If they’d sent a letter returning everything and I’d had to get another postal order, I would not have been happy!

However, although I realise now that the VFS fee was listed on their website, I still don’t see where I was asked for the Family Information Form!

Full text of the email is below:

Travel Document

I’m a permanent resident of Canada, but I don’t have a PR card as the CIC haven’t been able to deliver it to our postal address in Canada and I wasn’t in the country for my appointment to pick it up.

A Travel Document is a single-use visa that gets stuck in your passport and allows you to enter Canada without a PR card and it’s mainly used by the citizens of countries that need a visa to enter Canada. However, I’m a British citizen with a passport, so I don’t need a visa to enter Canada (for visiting, anyway). People on the British Expats forum say “if you’re British and think you need a Travel Document, you really don’t” and there are various personal experiences of people not requiring it or confusing immigration officials by being British and having one.

However, if we’re being technical, all returning permanent residents without PR cards do require a Travel Document. There can also be issues with airlines not allowing people to board their flight if they hold a one-way ticket but don’t have a PR card. The airline could face big costs if they have to send you back to the UK as Canada haven’t let you in.

Also, in our personal experience, the last time we visited Vancouver (after I had landed and activated my PR status, but we were just over for a holiday), the immigration officer at the “returning residents” line said that I should have got one.

Bearing all that in mind, I decided to get a Travel Document just to be on the safe side!

As usual, the form is on the CIC website – it’s fairly self-explanatory, although I had the additional step of explaining my new married name and passport number. Two bits were rather irritating though – I needed new passport photos taken and they wanted the originals of various important documents to be sent!

After thinking I had been so clever in getting extra photos the last time, this form requires a very slight difference in measurements:

We also needed to send our actual passports and marriage certificate – seems a bit silly when the actual permanent residency application just needed photocopies of things.

Since I applied for permanent residency, a new Canadian Visa Application Centre has opened in London and it does all the processing of applications. This added an extra form, so you consent to a third party dealing with your stuff. The Travel Document application cost £32, which was only payable by postal order (I suspect this may be the only time in my life I have to get a one!), plus they needed a pre-paid self-addressed Special Delivery Envelope.

So with fees and photos, the whole application has cost around £50 – if it all goes through okay, that’s a cheap price for peace of mind. On the other hand, I do now have seven working days of stressing about VFS losing our passports or marriage certificate!