Unforseen circumstances forced us to get a Chinese visa in a rush, here in Toronto. The experience left us a bit shell shocked, bewildered and traumatized. So that others do not experience the same, I’ll blog our travails.
Google “China visa Toronto” and you’ll get a couple of companies that claim they can do your Chinese visa. They are correct, but might charge you over double the cost. There is really only one way to get a visa for China, through VisaForChina.org and if you have sufficient lead time and follow certain steps you can reduce the amount of trauma you experience.
There is a lot of confusion from the Chinese embassy site in Toronto that I’d like to clarify. The Chinese Consulate in Toronto, under “Visa Application Center” simply links off to a new site, VisaForChina.org, all without explanation. This is because the consulate no longer directly processes visas for regular people. VisaForChina.org is the one and only defacto place to get your Chinese visa.
The Chinese Consulate in Ottawa is a little bit clearer, but not by much, and buried down 4 web page levels in their site:
Home > Consular Service > Visa,Passport, Notarization & Authentication > Visa Requirements > Visa to the Chinese mainland
NOTICE:Holders of diplomatic, service (official) passport, applicants applying for Hong Kong/Macao visa/entry permit still submit their applications directly to the Chinese Embassy. Visa applications other than those mentioned above should be submitted to the Chinese Visa Application Service Center (CVASC) in Ottawa. Please check the relevant information on www.visaforchina.org.
On either the Consulate or Embassy sites, note the section “The Requirements of the Chinese Visa Application”. You really need to carefully read this document as it asks for somewhat unusual documents such as photocopies of your old passports and any previous Chinese visas. They also require a photocopy of your current passport, that includes your passport photo.
VisaForChina Toronto Office: The VisaForChinaOffice in Toronto, at 393 University Avenue, 15th floor, is very well organized and run. Enter from the elevator and you’ll see the front reception desk. There are two lines: one for travel agencies and to pick up your completed visa, and the second for submitting your application. There are a couple of guys in dark blue jackets that work for VisaForChina that are very helpful.
VisaForChina says that you need to make an online appointment before you go down. While this is a good thing to do, their online appointments book up really quickly and may only be available 7 to 10 days later. If you are in a rush this is problematic. If you have no appointment I would recommend you have all your documents ready, make the trip down there and ask one of the blue jacket guys for help. Note that if you phone them in the the afternoon they may not answer. Maybe they are too busy?
We needed the Rush service, which they state “The processing time is usually 2 working days. Submit before 11:30am. As they do not work on the weekend this might prove time challenging for some people. If you want rush service there is virtually no way to get an online appointment. If you did get an online appointment, which has a 7-10 day lag, then there would be no point in getting the rush service as the regular service can be done in 4 days. For rush service, simply go down to their office and ask one of the blue jackets for help.
Atypical of China, the VisaForChina office gives out numbered tickets from their reception desk. All the service windows work off these tickets. This is critical because even if people line up at certain windows and push their way in, the service people go by the ticket numbers. The result is that there is no pushing, shoving, queue hopping and much more order. This relieves a lot of stress. Good for their office for this system.
Once your visa application is submitted you get a ticket. Anyone with this ticket can pick up your visa. You pay for your visa on pickup. Payment at the Visa center is cash or debit. No credit cards are allowed. The cost of the visa varies depending on speed of processing.
One benefit of the Chinese visa is that it is good for the life of your passport and is multi-entry. If you get a 10 year Canadian passport and the Chinese visa you are good for 10 years.
There are other companies that can get you your Chinese visa. They will charge you much more for the visa. What they and any other company can do is they collect your info and documents, send someone downtown to the VisaForChina office, and they will process and pick up your visa. They use the exact same visa office as everyone else. If you are in Toronto you can save your money and go down to the VisaForChina office yourself. These companies include:
https://china.visacenter.ca/
https://china.visahq.ca/
If you want a rush visa be very wary of travel agencies. We were on a very tight time line, one that if anything went wrong we would have to cancel the trip. Our travel agency, Pacific Express Travel, North York, promised that they could do the 2 day rush visa, but when we arrived at their office with our documents they then said they could not, and that we need to go the visa center downtown and do it ourselves. This put tremendous stress on us as we were very short of time. This almost resulted in a canceled trip and loss of our travel ticket. They knew our departure date and short time line, and still did not tell us the truth until it was almost too late. I would not recommend using this travel agency, and we will not use them in the future.
