Doctor, doctor…

“Doctor, doctor – gimme the news…”

Robert Palmer

I am now the proud possessor both of an Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) ‘Police Certificate’ and a signed and stamped ‘IMM 1017 Medical Report – Section A’…  these being amongst the numerous forms, appendices and other items that must be submitted in support of my application for Canadian Permanent Residency.

I attended for my medical examination at a clinic at Maidenhead in Berkshire here in the UK last Friday afternoon. I was there for nearly two hours and there was a point at which I thought that I would have to walk away empty handed and start the process again from the top.

The confusion arose because of the plethora of different routes by which application for Permanent Residency can be made. The most common case clearly encompasses those who need or wish to move to Canada to work. In such cases application is made in the home country – the UK in this case – and at the appropriate point in the process Citizenship and Immigration Canada send to the applicant a blank ‘IMM 1017 Medical Report – Section A’ form, with one of the photos that has been submitted with the application affixed to it and bearing the appropriate stamp. The applicant subsequently makes an appointment with a Designated Medical Practitioner and arrives for the medical, form in hand.

The fact that I had turned up bearing a blank form – no photo, no stamp – threw the clinic into a complete tizzy! Now – those applying for residency through a sponsor based in Canada – as I am – have to follow a different route, as outlined in ‘IMM 3901E – Sponsorship of a Spouse, Common-Law Partner, Conjugal Partner or Dependent Child Living Outside Canada – Part 3: Country Specific Instructions’ (for Western Europe). This specifies that all the forms and supporting documentation must be completed and gathered together before being forwarded to the prospective sponsor – in Canada – for submission to Citizenship and Immigration Canada along with the latter’s own application to be a sponsor.

To cut a long story short, after a lengthy search in their records the clinic eventually discovered an email relating to the only previous case that they had had for this form of application, and duly agreed to carry out the medical and to affix the photo and stamp the form themselves.

Hooray!

Having been given the green light it was then full speed ahead. I was subjected to a chest x-ray by the radiologist, to measurement and urine sampling by the nurse, to medical examination and general chit-chat by the doctor (who had been at medical school with the School Doctor at my previous school!) and finally to blood tests by another nurse.

End result? Unless anything untoward shows up in the blood tests (including the extra £60 test that they thought I should have, to add to the £250 I was already paying) then I am fit as a fiddle and possessed of the constitution of an ox!

Well – I could have told them that…