Applying for the IEC Visa

So for those of you who don’t know me, I am planning on moving to Canada but first, I must get experience working in my city of choice in order to be eligible for Permanent Residency. My way of going about this, is to go through the IEC Scheme. IEC is the International Experience Canada Working Holiday Visa. Me being me, thought this would be a simple process. Boy, was I wrong! 

Firstly, it helps to know when the first round of applications opens. Let me explain. For the UK, there are 5350 places available for this visa. They rolled these application out, all online on three separate days. These being, February 14th, February 25th and March 7th. On the 14th they were taking 1,000 application, on the 25th they were taking 2,000 and on the 7th they were taking the remaining 2,350. Like I said, it helps if you know when the first one is. So I completely missed out on the 14th. Not a problem, I’ll apply on the 25th. Or so I thought. 

The 25th rolls around, I have studied and studied, twice, three times, infinity, on the process. There is no time on the website as to when the round will open, only told that it will be the afternoon, so I get up at noon as I had a rare day off work, and I sit on my laptop. I wait, and I wait, and I wait, and I…well you get the picture. 3 O’clock comes, the round opens. HERE I GO!!! I register for my IEC-Kompass account successfully, then I go to start filling in all the forms on this part of the application, but what’s this? The website continuously crashes, redirects to the home page and I can’t fill anything in….not good! I sit there for 4 hours, and I only get 3 of the 7 sections completed and then the round closes…I shrug it off and think, okay i can fill all those in and be prepared for round 3. I did this and was all please with myself. 

I check my account again on the 6th of March to ensure all sections are completed, but where all 7 sections had a beautiful green tick next to them, there was one that has a big disturbing red cross next to it! WHAT IS GOING ON?!?! I email, I check forums, check the facebook, no one knows. Then I check the FAQ’s which I had read over and over again before i had registered. It was updated saying that this section will have to be completed when the round opens. I kid you not, in the section is one question…what type of visa are you applying for. That’s it…if you don’t know what type of visa you are applying for…then there is no hope! 

So now I know what it is, I stop panicking. I get up on the 7th as I luckily have the day off work. Round opens at 3 again, I log on, website keeps crashing again, after 10 minutes of fighting with the website I eventually manage to click the submit button!! THANK GOD! But when I look, it doesn’t look like it has submitted, so I click it again, and again…that’s three times…then I realize that my WTN (World Tracking Number) has changed. This didn’t panic me but if you check British Expats forum on the IEC, a lot of people were worrying. I took my chances, and I have been successful so far. 

Now, bearing in mind, I had all my CIC stuff completed prior to even submitting the IEC-Kompass application but I’ll cover that in another post. This is only about the IEC-Kompass account and the sheer confusion I went through for it. 

After 2 days of submitting, I got my Payment Request, which is an excellent sign. Another 2 days later I submitted my payment. then 3 days after that I got my payment verified. This may seem a long time but I am still waiting on my CAL (Conditional Acceptance Letter) as yes my friends, this is only the Assessment part of your application. It has been 6 days since my payment has been verified and I am still refusing to worry as processing time can be anything up to 8 weeks and I only applied 13 days ago, not that I’m keeping count. In a day or two, I’ll write about the myCIC part of the application. And make you aware of my progress.

 

Thank you for reading, if you have any questions regarding the applications, don’t hesitate to email me on erobson90@googlemail.com