Hello, my name is Natasha, and I’m a person who plans everything, but nothing ever goes according to plan, for all kinds of reasons (and then I suffer and get depressed). I’d always wanted to move away from Russia. I had plenty of ideas, thoughts, and sometimes opportunities to do it, but it never really happened until this time.
Immigration and relocation aren’t easy, especially during a pandemic. I’m sure anyone who has relocated has 1,001 stories about how they moved, but ours is just plain weird and unusual. I don’t even know where to start, because I can’t share one part of this story (although it deserves special attention), so I’ll start somewhere in the middle but fill in the background.
Back in April 2019, I started planning a relocation to Amsterdam with the company I worked for (a huge and pretty popular tech company). From then on, I lived in “waiting mode” (I decided not to buy an apartment, didn’t rent a new one, and so on). Although the relocation paperwork hadn’t officially started yet, some agreements were already in place. In the fall of 2019, my husband and I even went to Amsterdam to check it out one more time, talk to my uncle, who had been living there for more than 20 years, and go over everything related to health insurance and whatnot.
And then a lot of things happened that were out of my control, and I never went to Amsterdam. In fact, as I wrote at the beginning, I’ve been living in this “waiting mode” almost my whole life. I was always on the verge of moving somewhere, but things would fall through at the last moment, and I never moved. I was so tired of living with this feeling, I really wanted to move, and I had the opportunity to go to Canada through my husband’s (D.’s) work. And now the story begins!
We managed to get our visas right before COVID hit and a few weeks before they started closing all the borders. So we got stuck in Russia with valid work visas. Even then, although it left me emotionally off balance and in regular tears, it gave me hope that while we were waiting, something might change, and we could still move to Amsterdam. While the borders were closed, D. decided to change his last name. He had wanted to do it for a long time; he had his reasons.
Of course, before even starting to apply for a new last name, we consulted with the immigration lawyers who handled the entire moving process. They said he could go ahead and change his last name; there should be no issues, since the USA and Canada usually allow people to enter the country with a valid visa even if it shows an old last name. The main thing is that it’s still the same person. While the name change was in progress, Canada opened its borders and allowed people with work visas to enter the country. When D. finally received all the new documents, he emailed the lawyers to let them know that we were ready to fly. The first thing that surprised me was that the lawyers thought we had been in Canada for a long time already and that he was changing his last name from inside the country. Well, fine — anyway, they told us again that everything was OK, but if we were really worried, we could email the visa office to find out if they could re-issue the visa in the new passport. Unfortunately, the visa office said they would not do it, and if we wanted a new visa, we would have to re-apply.
It had taken us a couple of weeks to get our visas before COVID, but now the process could take up to six months, so the lawyers advised us to travel with our current documents because, as they had told us before, there should be no issues at the border. The only ones who might have questions were the airline, so the lawyers prepared a document explaining the situation to prevent any problems.
So, let’s skip everything I felt when I quit (it was terribly difficult and cost me countless sleepless nights), the goodbyes, and accepting the fact that we were moving not to Europe but to another continent (I had dreamed about Europe so much — and the older I got, the more I wanted to live there. Plus, I had a lot of friends and relatives there, and I would have been close to my parents).
Perhaps the scariest part before the trip was trying not to catch COVID, because, on top of the fact that COVID itself was already very bad, it would also postpone the trip once again (we had been in the “waiting stage” for a year already). Okay, I will drop this part of the story again, although I must admit that my nervous system could not take it all, and I had to start taking tranquilizers to get through it all. I kept calming myself down; I hoped that we would move soon, arrive, and I could finally just relax and come to my senses after all the hell I had gone through that year.
On December 1, the moving company packed up all of our belongings. They prepared two containers: one would travel by air (it would take two weeks to arrive in Canada), the other would travel by sea (it would take two months to arrive). That left us with two suitcases of essentials to take on board. It is also worth mentioning that on December 1, we discovered that Canada required additional confirmation for a person traveling as a family member (me), which, of course, I didn’t have. The lawyers assured us that since we had received our visas before COVID, that rule didn’t apply to me, since I would be traveling on a work visa with an open work permit (and this is very important!). Well, sure, although at that moment, I just wanted to be put into a medical coma until I landed on the other continent. But, oh well.
Point 1 – St. Petersburg, Pulkovo
We arrived at Pulkovo, showed our documents, and of course, as we expected, there were problems with the last name. The issue was not with the visa itself; the system simply wouldn’t let them print the boarding pass. Twenty minutes and one “main” computer later, they printed the tickets. They asked us whether we would be allowed to enter Canada with a different last name; we showed them the letter from our lawyer, and they let us through. The border control officers also had no questions. They only asked me the reason for my trip. I said it was for work, and when they asked where I worked, I said I worked in Toronto — and it worked :) I had an open work permit, so I didn’t have to have a job to enter the country, but that would have been too complicated for Russian border control officers.
Point 2 - Istanbul
We had a 9-hour layover in Istanbul. My former colleagues had told me about a hotel right at the airport, so we could get some sleep. After getting enough sleep, we went to get ready to “fight” with the local control services. Because Canada wasn’t letting everyone in, the checks at the gate were pretty serious. We showed all the documents, but of course, there were questions about the last name change. The man who checked our documents took pictures of them and sent them to someone on WhatsApp. He said he was sending them to the Canadian Immigration Services. We were not sure, though, that it was legal to take pictures of documents, including a job offer with a salary in it, and send them to some stranger on WhatsApp. They asked me if I was traveling as a spouse; I said “no” because I had a work visa. But again, oh well, just let us on board! The plane was departing at 3:45 pm; at 3:40 pm, we still didn’t know whether they would let us on board. In the end, the man called the Canadian Immigration Service, who asked if D. was the same person or not. After he confirmed it, they told him to let us board immediately. At exactly 3:45 pm, we got on the plane, and the doors closed right behind us.
Finally, we relaxed for a bit; the most exhausting part was behind us. We only worried about one thing — what if the border control officer asked me for supporting documents? Eleven hours of flying in N95 masks (plus the first flight and the layover), a swollen nose, and we finally landed in Toronto.
Point 3 - Toronto
We landed in Toronto around 7 pm. The first officer looked at our documents and said everything was OK and we could go ahead and get our work permits. And then something happened that no one expected at all. We gave the officer our documents and explained the situation with the last name change. He listened, and it looked like everything was clear. He just wanted to make sure the job offer was still valid (after all, it was almost a year old, and he had to make sure the company was still waiting for D.). We showed him the confirmation, and he asked us to wait for a while. An hour and a half later, he came back and said that he had reviewed our documents, but he couldn’t issue a work permit: he didn’t want to issue it with the new last name because all the documents had the previous one. And he didn’t want to issue the work permit with the old last name because D. now had a new one. Of course, he couldn’t issue me a work permit because I was a dependent. So he emailed the visa office and asked them what to do next. He told us to go to our apartment and quarantine for 14 days (as planned) while he waited for a reply from the visa office. He also took our passports and asked us to come back to the airport once the quarantine was over, when he would tell us if they could issue a new work permit here in Canada or whether we’d have to go back to Russia and re-apply for a new visa from scratch. Well, that sounded horrible! We called the lawyer, and he was shocked too.
So we quarantined for 14 days, not knowing our status here in Canada. We wouldn’t even order too many groceries, since we didn’t know if we were staying here or not. It was insane and mind-blowing. I felt horrible; every day, I woke up with the thought: “Is this our last day in Canada? I haven’t even seen the city.” On December 17, the quarantine was finally over, but there was still no news. The lawyer, by his own account, did everything he could (but nothing happened). Just in case we had to go back to Russia, we decided to go see Niagara Falls right after the quarantine, because we didn’t know if they would let us stay.
On December 21, we went back to the airport. Our officer wasn’t there, and another officer told us that our case was still in progress and that we should wait another two weeks and come back on January 11 (which is actually three weeks!) So, we continue to live in this weird status, unable to work, open a bank account, or rent an apartment. Our belongings can’t be shipped to Canada because Russian customs needs a photo of the stamp in the passport (and we don’t have our passports). All in all, it isn’t easy to relax in this situation.
P.S. According to the lawyers’ plan, the officer should have issued a work permit with the old last name by default, so D. could start working here and update the work permit in the meantime.