Gumby

I believe that you can get a permission letter to leave for the first part of the process, however once you have been fingerprinted you cannot leave until the Visa is delivered. good to ask Spencer or Sonia to avoid surprises.

No offense taken ComputerGuy, and I smiled when you called me a conservative even though that is not categorically correct. The area of Canada that I live in certainly is in a prolonged downturn and some of that can be attributed to Liberal policy and lack of follow thru, investment is way down and companies are selling off and leaving. If you are looking for evidence just look at how our markets have performed since the liberals have been in power. My reality is that we have laid off 10 staff in my department in the last 3 years so Google or not we are feeling pain. For the record I think Canada has very good healthcare, perhaps a little slow to get into but you will not hear me complain at this point in time. As always, people have a choice who they listen to.

I rarely comment on these forms, however as a Canadian living in Canada, teaching at a college I have to support "Islander", it is a fact that businesses and investors are leaving Canada. We are now run like a banana republic where even approved projects are shut down and our personal and corporate taxation rates are extremely high. Our debt is out of control and we have done nothing to help the planet. For a Prime Minister who cares so much about the economy he sure flies around in an empty plane a lot.

I see lots of contributors want to base the prices on when they bought and that is fair, what will the market do? Anybody's guess. I feel there is value in owning a home and being where I want to be, if I loose money in the end I have to look at what I gained in exchange and if that's a rich relaxed lifestyle with less stress and more sunshine, I would have to say I am willing to take that deal. it seems that some of the people who have lived lakeside preferred it when there were less people but for me I have only seen it's it is today. It is still wonderful.

Hello, We bought a new house in a gated community last year. I did a decent amount of research on the area as well as on the demographics of baby boomers. We paid in the mid twos for the property, it is 3 bedroom with 3 bathrooms. 2400sq ft. there will be lots of people who will say that gated communities are not real Mexico and even more that say the price is much to high. As someone in my late 50's all my life the baby boomers I have seen prices rise with the tide of boomers my whole life, for example when I was in my 20's a lake lot could be had for $25000 by the time I was in my mid 30,s it was $100000+. My point is that on average between Canada and the States alone aproximatly 11000 people per day are retiring and I feel that is going to put pressure on all Ajijic type markets, it is great to say that prices have always been lower and things can be hard to sell however that simply does not ring true in current times and the past is the past. i was in Ajijic in July sitting beside a camera crew doing a program for BBC on retirement places, it is just a start, retirees are becoming very big business and I believe the prices will continue to rise, and by the way, much like Vancouver, Ajijic has very limited land and that also needs to be considered. Did we pay to much? Is a gated community the wrong place to be? I do not know the answer to these questions and only time will tell. I do know however that I am very happy to be in the game. I will be renting the house out for a few years so the gated community will make that easier and the rent will offset some of the capital cost and in the end we have a place to go once our working lives are complete. In closing, we bought where we liked it, Ajijic is very nice as is the whole lakeside and the people truely make the place special. I wish you good fortune in your quest and my thoughts are don't wait to long or that place you can afford today might be out of reach soon.

Just went through the process, used Spencer and highly recommend his services, from the time I applied to getting fingerprinted was one day short of three weeks and from finger prints to receiving card was 12 days. keep in mind that once the fingerprints are taken until you get the card travel out of Mexico is not possible.

Walmart has some that are very good, bought one today. however go to the section that has the toilet seats because the ones in the cleaning section are not as good. the good ones have blue handles and are very soft, about 12"