How I got my VISA to Canada in 15 minutes!

I need to share this, this is how the whole universe supports you when you just don't agree to accept the failure. I have many such stories to share but I believe this recent one is worth sharing with the LinkedIn community.

So this all about how I got my VISA for Canada in 15 minutes!

Everything was planned and I was expecting my VISA to arrive by 10th June and the flight was booked for 17th June. To my surprise on 13th June, I got to know that the passport that reached to the Canadian Embassy damaged and I need to send my new passport to the Embassy for getting my VISA stamped.

I got my old passport on 16th June morning at 9 am from the courier company. 17th June 8:40 PM was my flight. I had two options reschedule my ticket or get my new passport and VISA before my flight. I had around 36 hours to get the everything done!

So I chose the latter one!

36 hours and to get the Passport from Jalandhar, VISA from Embassy and to reach Delhi from Jalandhar to catch my flight. BTW for those who have travelled from Jalandhar, it takes around 10 hours from Jalandhar to Delhi.

So now the madness begins.

I applied for the appointment for new passport, I got the appointment of 18th July! Keeping faith in myself I went to the RPO Office in Jalandhar I explained the whole situation to him and why it is so important for me to be present for this event in Canada. He understood my situation and he was kind enough to re-schedule my appointment for the same day i.e. 16th June, it was 11:00 am by then. But there was a catch, if the passport officer thinks I need to have my Police verification done before the passport getting printed then getting the passport the same day was impossible. To my surprise the passport officer allowed post verification in my case and my new passport was in my hands by 4:00 pm.

50% of the job was done! Now I had to get the VISA on my passport. The Embassy had sent me a letter which said that they do not accept passports by hand and it should be sent through two-way courier for the VISA stamping. I had no other option but to hand over my passport to the courier team. The process is follows:

1. I give my passport to the courier

2. The courier gives to VFS

3. VFS gives to the Embassy

4. Embassy stamps your VISA

5. Embassy gives passport to VFS

6. VFS gives it back to courier and

7. Courier hands it over to the client.

I had to follow the process so I handed it over to the courier with the hope that I will be able to get the passport back in 24 hours. In the meantime, since I had some hope I sent my luggage to Delhi airport through one of my friends. He and his family ensured me that they will make sure that my luggage is outside the Airport when I reach Delhi. Once I handed my passport to courier team, I got to know that my passport was sent to the Chandigarh office for stamping.

5:00 am I started from Jalandhar with the hope that I will be able to pick up my passport from VFS and by-pass the last courier step for handing it over to me in Jalandhar. I was expecting that easiest link to crack in the whole process would be the courier company. To my good luck one of my ex-employees was working in the same courier company. I called her up early morning and she was able to give me the contact of the right person I could contact. I wanted to make sure that my passport reaches VFS office the same day and they could send it to the Embassy for stamping. I was hopeful that I will still be able to get my passport stamped. Since it was raining that day passport did not reach VFS office as planned and it was stuck in the Ambala. I requested my ex-employee to help me collect it from the courier office and take it to the VFS office by hand. I was still following the process technically. But the courier team needed the approval from the VFS Team before handing it over to me in person. Then I had a series of calls with VFS Delhi and Chandigarh team finally they agreed to hand it over to me. In the meantime, my sister reached the VFS office and I headed towards Ambala office to collect the passport. It was noon by this time.

I collected the passport and reached office by 2:00 PM. While coming back from Ambala I booked my flight from Chandigarh to Delhi for 3:30 PM. Now VFS team did not agree to send my passport the Embassy for the stamping. My sister and I tried my level best to convince them and requested them to at-least to talk to Embassy once so they could take a call on case based on merit. All in vain! I asked them finally where is the Embassy let me go myself and talk to them. To my good luck it was just a floor above in the same building.

The guards outside the Embassy did not allow me to get in as they are not supposed to allow anyone except the Canadian passport holders to enter. I and my sister tried our level best to make them understand the urgency of the matter. Finally, the guards agreed to make a call to the officials. The response was not we expected. They said it is impossible to meet anyone without any appointment. It was 3:00 PM by now. I got a message that my flight has been delayed due to bad weather conditions. Now the new time was 4:40 PM.

We still had some hope. I and my sister just waited outside the Embassy. Out of nowhere a Canadian Official comes to the gate and my sister literally grabbed him and asked him that we need his support. She showed my tickets, the letter of invite from the government and explained how we got the passport done in 4 hours.

I think he could see some merit in our case and he went inside the office with my passport, ticket, invite and said that he is not sure if he can get me a VISA but lets see what happens. After almost 10 minutes I got an invite from office for an interview. The room was same as see in Hollywood movie. It was a closed room no window, a glass in-front of me and a mic. Finally, after the interview of 15 minutes and some really sharp questions, the immigration officer handed my passport to me with VISA stamped on it.

I did not know how to react at the moment, all I could ask him was - can I catch my flight to Canada now? He said - RUSH and get it you do not have much time left now, it was 3:45 PM now. I reached at the Chandigarh airport at 4:40 PM. I had no hope to catch the flight, to my surprise due to excessive flights in Delhi this flight in Chandigarh was further delayed.

I am writing this post from Canada . I must say this trip turned out to be one of the most beautiful trips of my life. I could meet some wonderful people here. Finally, I would say if you keep trying hard for what you really want the whole universe starts to conspire to help you.

Key take away from the whole incident is that if at any point in time if I would have lost the hope it would have been impossible to me to catch my flight. So what matters the most is to believe yourself. If you can really believe in yourself through your faith, others will not mind believing you either!