Question:
My husband and I are applying for
Canadian permanent resident status
for him (I am a Canadian citizen
and he is American--I am sponsoring
him). After reading our instructions
carefully several times, and giving
up on getting through to anyone
at the Consulate in Chicago that
I could ask, I am hoping that someone
might have experience with this
and might be able to help us with
the following two questions.
When the forms
say that we must provide passport-sized
photos of him, do they mean US passport
photos, Canadian passport photos,
or just anything roughly of that
size (such as vending machine photos)?
(I have in the past found it impossible
to get American photographers (well,
Champaign-Urbana photographers)
to take photos to Canadian passport
standards.)
When the forms
tell us to send passports (both
of ours), provincial driver's license
(mine) and marriage certificate,
they don't mean originals, do they?
They don't say copies, but neither
do they say what I'm supposed to
do without my driver's license for
six months! I checked the FAQ first,
and found no answers there! Please
e-mail if you've dealt with these
forms and know the answers. Thanks.
Answer:
In my dealings with Canadian Immigration,
they have pretty liberal standards
for photographs. I think the size
is not as important as whether or
not the photographer has to endorse
the back or not. If they require
endorsement then the machine prints
are obviously not acceptable. I've
seen lots of U.S. passports, and
the photo sizes don't look all that
different (I think we have a 5mm
size difference from the smallest
to the largest (width/height)).
Or has the U.S. changed their sizes
since they went to the 10 year passports
a few years back?
I think in
the case of someone immigrating
from another country, the Canadian
Immigration authorities must be
willing to accept that countries
"official passport" sized photos
since it may be impossible to get
anything else.. I believe that it
is possible to get photographers
to take a slightly larger picture
and then to just cut it to the right
size.
Or it should
be possible to get photographs of
the right size if you are willing
to go to the Consulate and ask them
for a photographer who does it near
them. Since I do not have a map
handy I do not know if this would
be feasible for you to do or not.
I believe that they mean copies.
I would check with them, but do
your best to get certified copies.
Under no circumstances should you
send the originals by mail. When
my wife and I applied for immigration
to Canada about two years ago, we
were told that US-spec passport
photos would suffice.
We had the
pictures taken at a nearby AAA affiliate
(member discount); they were the
US type of photo (i.e., they did
=not= have a white strip for a signature);
and the consulate accepted them
without complaint. When the forms
tell us to send passports (both
of ours), provincial driver's license
(mine) and marriage certifi- cate,
they don't mean originals, do they?
They don't say copies, but neither
do they say what I'm supposed to
do without my driver's license for
six months! Send official, certified
copies. For birth/marriage certificates,
you should use one of the official
copies you can get from the appropriate
governmental office of vital records.
Be sure to get the kind of copy
that is a true photocopy of the
entire original certificate and
is embossed with an official seal.
Sometimes,
these days, they'll offer you a
brief computer printout abstract
of the info in question, but this
kind of "certificate" will probably
=not= be accepted. For other things
(passports, driver's licences, or
whatever), make a photocopy of the
document, then take the original
and the copy to a notary public
and have the notary certify that
it is a true copy. In some states
(such as California, where I'm originally
from), notaries cannot directly
certify such things, so what we
did was write an affi- davit on
the photocopy saying that it was
a true and unaltered copy of the
original. The notary put us under
oath as we signed the photo- copy
in his presence, then added a "subscribed
and sworn before me" certification
along with his signature and seal.
If you have
a choice between sending copies
of documents in advance and bringing
them with you to the interview with
the immigration officer, you should
probably do the latter. When I submitted
our immigration application (in
person at the Los Angeles consulate),
the clerk told me to hang on to
the birth and marriage certificates
and bring them to the interview
(that way, I could keep the copies
-- if I had submitted them as part
of the application, we wouldn't
have got them back). As for our
US passports, we submitted a notarized
photocopy of them, and they accepted
said photocopy with the application,
but they still wanted us to bring
our passports to the interview anyway.
