"In Process"

We got the process started in October 2010, when I sent off my fingerprints to the FBI in Virginia.  Why the FBI, since I am immigrating to Canada?  Each prospective immigrant is required to submit a police certificate for every country they have resided in for 6 months or more since age 18.  As I had been in NY for almost a year and a half, I needed the clearance from the FBI as proof that I had been law-abiding in the US.

Seven weeks later, G received the results in Canada, as I had requested they send it directly to him.  Dated Dec 3, they confirmed that I had no federal police record in the US.  I was now on the clock, as the police certificates can be no more than 3 months old when your application is submitted.

I started gathering our relationship "evidence", proofs that we had a genuine, enduring relationship.  Essentially, I had to audit our relationship and present the file to the immigration authorities in Canada, that's how I approached it.  I had to present financial, legal and emotional evidence to prove I hadn't married G just so I could immigrate.

By mid-January I was about ready.  I endured a medical examination which included a blood test (I hate needles) and a chest X-ray, went through the process for a Jamaican police certificate again, and finally got together letters from our friends and family in support of us.

With everything together, I handed off the package to FedEx, and suffered severe separation anxiety.  After working on it for four months, I was not ready to be parted from that package, but I needed to let it go and have G add his own section, we had been apart for almost six months and we couldn't be together again until we had submitted the package and he got his replacement passport (long story).

We submitted the package on Feb 14, 2011, it was received on Feb 15 at the Case Processing Centre, and the clock started for stage one: sponsor approval.  At the time it was taking about 37 days for that, so I was expecting we would hear something around Mar 15.  When nothing happened by then, and others who filed at the same time or after were getting responses, I became alarmed.  After a brief argument with G, I got him to inquire of the call centre what was going on, and finally we got a file number and our electronic Client Application Status service became active.

Aside from saying they had begun processing his application to sponsor me, nothing more has been added.  No decision, which they are now issuing for applications filed in March, no advisory that they had returned our package for lack of some vital document or signature.  Nothing more.  Since G was here with me in Jamaica from the end of March until yesterday, we had no way of checking on it.  Now that he's returned to Canada, as soon as the Easter holidays are done, we have to find out what's going on.