One More Barranquillera in Londombia

[chameleon]

Thanks Chameleon.  We were married at the end of July 2010, it took me until mid September to assemble and submit the paperwork, and she was approved in mid July 2011.  Her actual arrival was delayed until late September as I was unemployed for a few months.

Her English is not too bad ... not good enough to work yet, but improving every day.  She took a little English in high school and university, and then she took a one year English course at an institute in Barranquilla. 

Until she arrived here in Canada though, we spoke about 98% of the time in Spanish, so she didn`t have much opportunity to practice.  Now we speak about 80% of the time in English.

Today she had an oral exam at school and was very happy with the result (I received a text message with lots of happy faces).  The teacher graded her as ``master of level 4 and working in level 5``.  I think the program has 8 levels, so she`s doing well.

It took 10 months to get a visa after you were married and got the paperwork in? Do you know if that is that the norm for Canada or did you encounter a problem? Did you use an immigration attorney?

[whitey]

Seems long for you guys in the US, but 10 months is actually very good in Canada.  12-15 months or more is very common here from Colombia.  Not sure why, other than that`s how the gov`t chooses to staff and process the visas. 

Newcomers as they are called here get a lot of ``free``benefits from the gov`t, including English classes, bus fare, health care, even welfare if necessary.  There are apparently even more benefits in the province of Quebec, but I don`t live there.  So, I guess the gov`t isn`t in a hurry to process the visas.   

I didn`t use an attorney and didn`t need one - there were no issues or delays at all with our paperwork.