My landing experience as Canadian PR

Ok guys, I am back in the US after a week long vacation/landing to Alberta. We visited Lethbridge, Calgary, Banff, Red Deer and Edmonton. We fell in love with Banff and for a bigger city, we liked Edmonton than Calgary. One thing we were shocked to learn that Alberta was much more expensive than where we live in the US (Utah). For example, 24 bottles of water cost us $6.99 in Calgary when we can buy the same size of water for $3.99 in Utah and sometime $3.25 when it is on sale. Restaurant foods were double the price of what we pay here in Utah. For those of you who have lived in bigger and expensive cities like New York and San Francisco, it may not feel very expensive though.

While we were there, we applied for SIN, and Health Cards. We also opened a bank account in the Royal Bank of Canada. The account was NOT free. We have to pay $4 per month maintenance fee. We had to open a bank account before we could apply for the Health Cards as we had to show the proof of address for that. I tried to get Alberta driver license too, but I had to give up my Utah license for that and I did not do that. There were long waits for both SIN and health cards. We had to go to two different placed and we spent about 2 hours in each place.

Let's talk about the landing. We got to Coutts, AB on Nov 15 about 12:45PM and we were out by 1:30PM. The landing process itself was very easy. At the port of entry, I had to roll my car window down and talk to an officer.
Officer: What is the purpose of your visit sir?
Me: We are landing as permanent residents.
Officer: How many people in the vehicle?
Me: 4
Officer: Can I see the passports and PR documents?
Me: They are in the bag in the back of my car. If you want, I can come out of the car and pull them out.
Officer: No need to do that and he gave me a yellow piece of paper and asked me to park on the left parking lot and go to the immigration desk.
Me: Do I put the paper in my car?
Officer: No, you take that to the immigration desk.
Me: Thank you sir!

Parked the car and went in and headed to the immigration desk. There were three officers and two of them were doing nothing. A lady office asked me if she could help us.
Officer: Can I help you?
Me: Gave the yellow paper and told her that we are there to land as PRs.
Officer: Give me your passports.
Me: Here they are.
Officer: Other documents?
Me: What other documents?
Officer: The COPRs?
Me: Oh, I am sorry. I totally forgot to give you the main documents.
Officer: No problem, glad you have them.
Officer: Are you the father of the both children?
Me: Yes, I am.
Officer: Are you going to sign the COPR documents for them as they are obviously younger than 14 years old.
Me: If that is how it works, then I will sign.
Officer: Have a sit and we will call you later.

She started doing some paper works. Called me to sign my COPR and kids COPRs. She asked me to check all the spellings etc on the COPR documents. She asked my wife to come forward and sign the COPR as well. She asked me to mailing address to mail the PR cards and I gave her the address. She asked me a phone number too, and I gave my friend's relatives phone number. The officer also asked me to take a photo for me as she did not like my PR photo as it did not have white background. A male officer took the photo. He printed it right away. She asked me if I wanted to look at the photo and see I like it. I made the face that I did not like the photo very much. She told me that if I am not happy with the photo, she is more than happy to make the male office take the photo until I am satisfied. She said, the photo will stay on my PR card for 5 years and she wants me to be happy with my photo. She also said that the photo meets the CIC requirements, but she wants me to be happy with the photo. I said, if it meets the requirements, then I do not care. So she went ahead with the photo and gave me 3 extra photos to keep. If I had to go through this in the USCIS port of entry, they would have deported me from right there. Canadian Officers were too nice.

After that, she stapled the COPR documents in the passports and asked us to come forward. She explained the residency rules and where to apply for SIN etc. Then she said, congratulations and welcome to Canada. No questions about the fund at all. She pointed us to go to the Traffic and Custom desk. There was another sweet lady waiting for me. She looked at the goods accompanying and goods follow lists. Started filling out some things on the forms. She asked, if I am bringing in a car to Canada and I said in the future and the car is listed on the goods to follow list. She asked what I am driving right now. I said a rental vehicle that is in the parking lot. There were no more questions about the vehicle or goods to follow list. She asked me if I was a US citizen. I said no. She asked me my citizenship and I told her Nepal and she spelled it to make sure she was right. I said yes, She was done with the paper work and gave me a copy of it and said congratulations and welcome to Canada.

Then I asked her about the money as I was carrying a cashier's check of US$20K. I asked her if I need to do some paper work for the money, she said we will fill out a form for you. Then she did. I also said we have some cash too, she said, don't worry about it. Then we said, thank you and headed to Lethbridge.

When we came back after 5 days in Canada, the experience in the US border was not too pleasant. I will explain it on my next post.