What a mouthful.
CGFNS = Visa Screen and Credential Eval
I prefer mine but who's keeping score?
This is where you need to go after you have your NCLEX, 1 year experience, and you have decided which launchpad state you want to start in.
Once you create your profile, you will be directed to select which service you want to buy. Even if you have already researched the specific requirements from the BON where you want to apply, which you definitely should have by this point, I reccomend plugging in the specific state and making sure what comes up, matches what you were planning to purchase.
If you are planning to go to NY first, which I highly recommend against for reasons I will discuss in my next post, there is a CVS for NY specifically. Many other states require a CES. Some states require this even after we have been working in the states. I really find it to be overkill considering the proximity, and similarity of our Countries', and the fact that many RN's in Canada have bachelor degrees, and we all also write the NCLEX...... it boggles my mind the extent to which they need to "evaluate" our education.
But, let's just jump through these hoops and continue right along.
So you know the services you need, Visa Screen plus some kind of credential eval.
Time to part with close to 1000.00 CAD in order to buy these services. Make sure you have a puke bucket close by for this part
Congratulations!!!! You have officially started the process of obtaining your TN Visa.....the Golden ticket that allows you to work in the USA
Let the waiting begin!!!
No but seriously..... I have heard stories of the visa screening process taking 8 months to a year. Not All of that is the fault of the company though. And mine only took 13 weeks, but I was WAY on top of the process. I made several phone calls and emails, and was checking my status daily.
Once you purchase the visa screen, a link opens on your dashboard that you can click on. This takes you to another page where you can see what is required for CGFNS to proceed with the visa screen. For me that page looked like this. It will likely be very similar for you. As you can see, beside each requirement is a link.......well, before these read " meets all program requirements", there were links. These links take you to the specific forms you need to send to your nursing school, your licensing bodies, your high school.....
So as you can see, you are now creating work for several different people, in several different places, and will be at the whim of their efficiency. Talk to these places BEFORE you send them these forms. I did not need to mail any of these as each place submitted online. I won't get into too much detail because your specific nursing body, your school, may have different processes than mine, so just check with them. As soon as I called BCCNM and mentioned CGFNS, the employee knew exactly what I needed, and told me exactly how to do it. It was awesome. Alberta was just as easy.
Something I learned that came up, and actually caused a little confusion, is that because your transcript comes from student records, and your education breakdown comes from the nursing department, these might take different lengths of time to arrive at cgfns, and different lengths to process. But they both fall under one section, so when cgfns recieves one before the other, it makes that requirement appear incomplete. At least in my circumstance, that was the case.
Error 1
I had submitted all my document requests to to my school, nursing department, and licensing bodies, and even reached out to the nursing department to get an ETA so I could follow up appropriately. On Aug 16 I got a notification that my transcript was rejected stating the reason "date of birth missing".
What the.......??? I called CGFNS
The employee I spoke with looked up my file and told me that yes, my birthday was missing..... this made no sense to me since my transcript is an official document, one that I can easily pull up and see for myself, she was insisting.....
I emailed the nursing department and they confirmed that my detailed education document was uploaded, via online portal, and sent me a picture that it was complete with my full name and date of birth.
I called CGFNS back, keep in mind my average wait time on hold with these guys was 45 minutes......long distance. Ugh. Again I was told it was my birthday.
This time I mentioned that I had a screenshot of the documents uploaded onto the digital credential exchange recieved July 27, 2021, and the employee who was very short, and borderline rude changed her tone and told me to hold.
She came back to say that it wasn't my birthday, but that the 2 forms that were supposed to accompany my transcript were never sent. I reminded her of the aforementioned screenshot, and then she informed me that they have a 25 working day processing window once a document has been recieved in the system. This is not posted anywhere....... so July 27 to Aug 15.....that's.....well not 25 working days.
So because my transcript and breakdown were sent and recieved at different times, an error message was triggered. Why it had literally nothing to do with what was going on, I will never know. But had I not called, and stayed on top of things, who knows how long that error would have sat there.
My visa screen status changed to ready for review one week later.....19 working days after everything being uploaded to the system. Within the same couple of days, my CVS for NY read "report submitted", and then "report sent".
So, the next day I applied, and paid for my NY license. I was excited that things seemed to be going quick! One little hiccup, but we were still on track.
A month later on Sept 14, my visa screen status changed to final license review. And on the 16th it changed to visa screen complete. 4 days later it was in my hand.
13 weeks from the time I purchased it, and only 4 weeks from the time everything was uploaded.
I was very satisfied at this point, assuming everything was done and my next step would be my license. Remember I applied for my NY license back in Aug, when cgfns changed the status of my CVS to "report sent".
*NY is very clear that you are not to contact them prior to 6 weeks after applying and only at that point, you can send an email via a contact us form.
On Sept 7 I recieved an email from NY stating that " because you stated you were educated outside of the USA, you are required to have your educated evaluated...." going on to list the ways I could do that. I replied to this email asking if I needed to send anything beyond the CVS from CGFNS, and for someone to please reply if something was missing. I got no response from NY. I assumed that they just had not processed that part of my application, and it was still 4 weeks out from when I was allowed to contact them.
Error 2
Finally that 6 week mark came, and after still hearing nothing back, I sent the contact us form.
Crickets....
a week later I decided to track down a phone number for customer service. I found it, and waited on hold for an hour, only to be told there was no CVS on my file, and that I could only talk to the nursing department on Tuesday or Thursday, it was Wednesday.
🤬
I emailed cgfns right away, then called them the next morning. It was confirmed, my CVS was never sent to NY, even though somehow my status said report sent. I am still fuming about this. The employee at cgfns told me it was some computer glitch that they became aware of yesterday..(ya, when I emailed them), but assured me that it had now been sent.
2 months later......
I messaged them again stating that I didn't feel like this issue was resolved because no one had reached out to me. Considering the service I paid for was not provided, I expected at least an apology, but nothing. They did reply to my message over a week later stating that an employee had told me on Oct 12 that my report was sent, and they hoped that resolved my issue. It doesn't.
So in reality my CGFNS process was not completed until Oct 18, 4 months from the date of purchase, which is on par for what I had heard as far as timelines go.
All in all, I'm only somewhat satisfied with this company, but because they are so widely recognized and easy to access, I felt I made the right choice. I feel the costs could definitely go down, the customer service needs work, and the website has some kinks.....like spam auto emails, and strange error messages that even the staff don't understand. I feel the CVS was a waste of money and still don't see why I even needed it since it didn't satisfy any requirements as far as NY is concerned. But we will get more into that in the next one.
The good
- easy to navigate platform, very user friendly
- good reputation and widely recognized
- timely in my experience
- document storage included in fee
The bad
- cost
- often rude customer service
- more than one error that cost me time, and money
- unexpected delays, and difficult to communicate with online
- no accountability when errors are made
The annoying
- I recieved an email every single night from when my report said ready for review to visa screen complete.... 23 days......telling me I qualified for a 500 dollar expedited review service, and when I emailed them asking them to stop, that I wasn't interested, it continued and I got no response...
- I could only open messages from them on my laptop, not on my phone or work computer.
- getting automated survey invites after every interaction
- just trying to say "cgfns" outloud sometimes is hard
There you have it guys. Hopefully your visa screen process goes even smoother than mine
Xo
Alana
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