Invite The World

As the Grand Prize Winner of the Invite The World Campaign, my ‘obligation’ is to invite four people from around the world to visit Vancouver. [My 'obligation' is indeed my honour.] As revealed in my previous post, I have decided my guests to be my relatives in China and in Hong Kong. Visitors from China are required visa to enter Canada. To many of you applying for a visa would seem to be a matter of filling out few pieces of document and submitting them to a Canadian Visa Office overseas. But to people who know very little English (or French) the lots of paper work could be a disastrous work.

It turned out, the process on the part of my guests was fully, self-explanatorily guided and the dealing with the Visa Office was extremely smooth. I must say that, from the information given to me and the experience I had, appreciations and applause must go to the Canadian Visa Office in China who has provided a very informative website for all visa purposes. The site contains all information and all necessary form readily available to everyone in need: as in our case, my guests can do properly simply following exactly the instructions posted on the site and I, as the inviting party, can also follow the information obtainable from the site to provide supporting documents to help complete their visa applications.

If you have been thinking of inviting your friends or relatives from China to visit you in Canada, the information attached below could be of help. And believe me, the whole process (re: applying for visitor visa) could be much simpler than you or your guests would have imagined.

1. STARTING POINT: Visit the Canada Visa information website in both Chinese and English:
http://www.vfs-canada.com.cn/chinese/visaforms.aspx

2. FOLLOW THE GUIDES: The following documents contain very detailed instructions – can be very helpful for both the visa applicant and the inviting party:
GUIDES IN ENGLISH:
http://www.vfs-canada.com.cn/images/TRVGuideEnglish(Applicant)6dec.pdf
GUIDES IN CHINESE:
http://www.vfs-canada.com.cn/images/TRVGuideChinese(Applicant)6dec.pdf

3. MY ADVICE (based on my experience in this recent process): Write a detailed invitation letter including all the information mentioned in the GUIDES (see point #2 above) – it would be very helpful for the Visa Officers in processing your guests’ visa applications.

So start inviting your friends and relatives around the world to visit you in Canada now – the process could be easier than you think!