Wednesday, June 15, 2011

Step by step - Citizenship Application Part 1...

Although they appear straight forward, they are not! To apply for citizenship of your adopted child, go here. If you would like to apply to sponsor your adopted child as a permanent resident, go here.

(For those not familiar with the process - a potential adoptive parent (PAP) needs to pre apply to Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC) to be able to verify you are eligible to sponsor a child for Immigration - or to confirm your Canadian citizenship to apply for your child's citizenship.)

Don't even think about calling CIC unless you have first read the PDF instruction manual.

When you do call with the following questions:

A. Do I need to include my husband's ID?
B. Do I need proof of my own name change via marriage?
C. What is the current timeline?

The answers are:

A. The manual clearly states it's required of the person applying. If you are the person applying, then you only need to provide your own.
B. (After directing me to the PDF twice, she also was unable to clearly understand who they were asking this of - she needed to consult with someone else.) The name change documents are required by the adopted person only where applicable.
C. 20 weeks (!!!!!!!!!)

After those questions are asked - you provide all of your husbands documentation as well (JUST IN CASE!), then you provide all of your name change documentation as well (JUST IN CASE!).... cause you certainly don't want it sent back!

Proceed to your nearest notary and inquire about compassionate rates for adoption - as it is not going to be cheap to notarize all of your documents (and extra documents) as true certified copies.

Fedex your application because Canada Post is on strike. But please take note - the address they give you in the PDF is a box # and no courier will ship to a postal box. To save you the call and a long time on hold - the address for the CPC Adoption for citizenship is:
CPC Adoption
47-49 Dorchester St
Sydney, NS
B1P 5Z2

$200 for the fee to process the Part 1 (2 applications)
$40 in notary fees (And the lady at the desk was nice enough to ask me "... and why do you want to do that?" (adopt from Kenya) - nice eh? I had to be nice though because I was trying to get a discount - need to come up with something real witty for the next person who asks me that though!! Ideas???)
$32 in courier fees

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