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Help! What is the procedure to aquire a visa for Ticos wanting to visit Canada for a couple of weeks? They have their passports so what is the next step? Do they have to have a Canadian accompany them to the Canadian Embassy?
I have some experience with this and I’m Canadian. It is very difficult to get a visitors visa to Canada for someone from Costa Rica UNLESS they have money, income from employment and strong ties to their community. VERY difficult.
Get your federal M.P. to write a letter of support if you have any sort of relationship with her/him. Mine told me the Can. Embassy has final say and MP’s have little pull. By the way, you’ll be dealing with the Can. Emb. in Guatemala, not the one in C.R. They will take the application and forward it to Guatemala where it has been our experience that the people who process the application don’t understand English very well.
I’m serious about this. And, to further frustrate the situation, there is no appeal and they don’t have to explain why they reject you and if they do, it’ll be very vague. I got my MP to look into the reasons given and she was told something different from what we were told.
Here is just one of the frustrations we’ve had trying to get my daughter’s boyfriend a temp. res. (visitors) visa. I wrote a letter for the application taking financial responsibility for him while here. I explained that my daughter is living with him and they plan to get married in Costa Rica soon. I further explained that we wanted him to come spend Christmas with us and he’d be staying for a month and then they’d be going back to C.R. In their explanation of why they rejected his application they left us with the impression that they felt he and I were in a homosexual relationship and the file was denied and closed. No appeal and no way to further explain. How do you get to that with what I wrote? No phone calls to clarify if confused. Just reject it.
Now I know I’m not the most polished writer ever to live but I think I explained the situation well enough for anyone who speaks reasonable English to understand fairly clearly what was going on.
The whole process costs about $75 and I’m sure they pay some nice Guatemalan lady less than $20 a day to process these things. They keep telling us we’re free to apply again if we like but they remain vague as to exactly what they want to see before approving him.
This time we’ve got a lawyer here in Canada and also a letter from the MP, and we’re waiting until after they get married in C.R. before we waste another $75.
There doesn’t seem to be anything anyone can do about this pathetic situation. Good luck. If you learn anything new will you please post it. And I will too as long as Scott is okay with that.
Thank you very much ssure, I really appreciate you taking the time to reply to my query. As you suggest we will probably try the lawyer, MP route although none of this sounds very promising. If we go ahead with this I will let you know how it all turns out. This sounds like it could take ages, I think the worst part is that they have to purchase return tickets first. Talk about nightmares in Costa Rica, they are nothing compared to this!
If I were you I would suggest to them they not purchase return tickets before submitting the visa application. They understood why we were not willing to buy them before being approved for the visa. That part they were fairly reasonable about. Good luck
My god is Canadian immigration under the control of the US State Department? Sounds like the new American newly found hate for the brown people of the world moved north to Canada settlement in Immigration. Now the US has a crisis getting passports issued by State in a timely manner. This week in Portland had lots of press that families trying to go to Mexico for spring break and applied for the new US passport in January, were told “TS” by State that the four week turn around was off and now they could be taking at least ten weeks to get you the passport. Thank goodness that I realized in November that the promises of a four week turn around for the new passports was bogus in light of efficiency of the current administration, so I applied immediately receiving mine about the third week of January.
Thanks,
Tom PortlandHi Tom:
I doubt the trouble central americans are having getting visitors visa’s to Canada right now has anything to do with US policy. I could be wrong but I think it’s because we’re having troubles of our own here that have influenced policy.
In our city over the last 10 years there has been a huge increase in Spanish speaking gangs selling dope on the corners. Part of my work brings me into contact with them and I’ve not met one so far who’s from Costa Rica. Too bad everyone from the C.A. area tends to get painted with the same brush.
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