We got our CoPR and have to land in Canada to get our PR. We are on H1b (both myself and my spouse), and we both will need to get our H1b visa stamped to get back to the US. Can people share any H1b experiences of getting it stamped in Toronto given the difficult circumstances and high chances of RFE.
We have 2 small kids. Would it make sense to book a single family appointment for me and my spouse (kids are US citizens but we would need to take them since we don’t know anyone in Canada) or does it make more sense to do each of appointments individually?
We are thinking of going to the Toronto consulate. If we go with Kids who are US citizens, do they allow kids to be with us during the whole process of visa stamping?
My wife, our son and I went to Toronto and came back on expired H1B stamps using automatic visa revalidation to resenter the US. We stayed in Canada for 4-5 days. We didn’t attempt h1b visa stamping due to concerns of delays, rejection etc. You may want to consider AVR unless you want to get h1b stamps on this trip for future use.
@am1 Thank you for your response. I had posted a separate question on AVR asking for any experiences on that front. This helps to know. We were also considering AVR since we don’t really have any specific need for H1b stamping at this time.
Could you share more details on the AVR experience. Did you go by road or flight? Which is preferable? Any details on your overall experience and pointers on preparing for the same would be immensely helpful for us to plan this.
Anecdotal evidence/heresay suggests stamping in home country (India) is much safer than in a third country. Chances of rejection are higher in the latter case. I don’t know anything about AVR for H-1 but it seems people are using it successfully. There is also an AVR for expired F-1 holders, when I was doing the research a while ago.
We took a flight to Toronto YYZ; on the way back all US immigration is done in Toronto and you board a domestic flight to US. Its the same immigration process just as at a US airport but its will be in Toronto. You definitely need to carry your original current I-797 - the immigration officer will ask for it. We also carried employment verification letters from our employers (both us are on H1B) and other supporting documents, pay stubs etc. They asked us why we were in Canada and how long we were planning to stay in the US. We had to go through secondary check though, I was not sure why but later I found out that one of our finger prints did not scan properly so it didn’t match their records. Other than that there were no other issues. But please make sure to check the latest changes, if any, on AVR and the required docs. Things change quickly these days. We also carried all documents needed for H1B stamping, just incase we could not do AVR, we could apply for visa.
I am on H4 visa. i am planning to go Canada for my stamping and my husband will go India for stamping due to some reason i can’t go India…so is there any problem if do my stamping from (Toronto) Canada?..
Canada doesn’t care what visa status you are on in what country, during landing. You need to make sure, if you are returning to the US, that you can, on your US visa.