J's Canadian Immigration Saga

7-Oct-08

PR Approved and the road ahead

The LA Consulate says my PR is approved! Now I need to send my passport to them within 60 days of September 25. No extensions allowed. I wrote in and asked if they could have the visa issued by Tokyo, and got a cold reply saying, well, no. Anyway, so that's that.

Now looking ahead, in terms of choosing a landing date, the considerations are:

• Medical certificate expires July 29, 2009. I can get another one issued but it costs a couple hundred bucks.
• Probably need to land within 3 years of the visa issue date (to satisfy the "2 years out of 5" rule to maintain Canadian PR) -- latest date, maybe September-ish, 2012 (but could be as early as Feb 2011 if they use the app date?)
• Counting days for citizenship is no longer a consideration for landing date (see below)

Once landed, I need to keep up the "2 years out of 5" Canadian residence rule to maintain Canadian PR.

Citizenship: the requirement to have been living in Canada for at least 3 years (1,095 days) in the 4-year period preceding application.

• Time spend living in Canada prior to receiving the PR would have been counted as half-days, but only within in the 4-year window. Since I've been out of Canada since Feb 2007, there is no way for me to satisfy the two variables -- landing date and application date -- in such a way that those days would be counted. :(
  
• Therefore, it's the same as starting from scratch -- three years living continuously in Canada. Sigh.

Sponsoring Mom & Dad: This is so darn complicated and drawn-out that I have another SponsoringMomAndDad page just to figure stuff out there.

25-Jan-08

The truth about Canadian immigration medical exams

So it's time to get my medical exam done. I thought this would be a pretty simple affair - bring in a form, have the doctor look me over, sign it and pay a typical exam fee. Well, almost. Canada has a network of Designated Medical Practitioners around the world who are authorized to give immigration exams. So I called the nearest clinic in Kobe hoping to get it done quickly, but boy was I in for a surprise. The rude receptionist said they only answer the phone between 2 and 4 on weekdays (umm, then why was I speaking to her then). So I did as told and called back and got the details: they don't take appointments, expect you to come in the morning on a weekday and wait, charge 40,000 yen, and take 4 weeks to deliver the report. You've gotta be kidding. So I started searching around. Tokyo was a bit cheaper, but nowhere is open on weekends.

Fast forward 5 months later and I finally got around to summarizing the results of an international investigation into the prices of Canadian immigration medical checks. Hong Kong and Korea have standardized pricing set by the local Canadian Consulate. Japan is clearly overpriced -- click on any column of the following table to sort.

So I'm going to Hong Kong to have my medical exam done -- and taking the $100-200 saved and applying it towards the plane ticket, and having some real dim sum for a change. That's because of you, Canadian Embassy in Japan!

Note: Of course, the base cost of medical care is different in various countries. I tried to normalize the prices based on the OECD Comparitive Price Index, but there's no data for Hong Kong or Taiwan. But according to the data, Japan is a mere 7% higher than Canada, and Korea 27% lower, so that doesn't explain the difference in fees.

Expense Log

Not including postage and other stuff like that.