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So I might be going to Canada if they approve my visa. They asked for the amount of money I'll be taking there (via the application form) during my visit and they asked proof for it (bank statements etc.). I provided it and everything is good.

However, since I'm applying for the visa 4-5 months prior to my travel plans (due to ticket price getting more expensive the closer I get to the time I actually want to go there), the money report I gave might not be the amount I promised during the application. It could be less or more (probably less).

Is this a problem? Will they ask me at the airport how much money I have on me? Can they access my visa application and ask why I didn't bring as much as I promised?

That's my question.

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If you are actually carrying (including your checked luggage) more than $10,000 Canadian in cash or certain bearer-type instruments, then you should pro-actively declare it.

The country you are leaving (and possibly other countries you are traveling through such as the US) may have similar regulations, which would usually be in their own currency, of course. They're interested in the total amount of value- if you have $10,000 US equivalent in Vietnamese dong the US authorities need to know at their border, or your cash could end up being theirs. It's not a problem (generally) if you declare it and have some kind of plausible reason for having that much cash, or so I'm told.

It's unlikely you will be asked exactly how much money you have, but you should have a reasonable amount for your stay. If you told them $2,000 and you have $50 in your pocket they might question your intentions and how you were going to support yourself while in-country, which would lead to more questions and more opportunities for something to come up that does not support your entry.

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    If you have any credit card, take that too. No one expects you to carry everything in cash.
    – Andrew Lazarus
    Feb 7, 2016 at 21:33
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    As long as it doesn't appear like you'll be indigent there should not be a problem. $700 won't last long in Toronto but if you have credit cards or some other means, it's more than enough. Most people don't carry more than a few hundred dollars.
    – Spehro Pefhany
    Feb 7, 2016 at 23:52
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Is this a problem? Will they ask me at the airport how much money I have on me? Can they access my visa application and ask why I didn't bring as much as I promised?

  1. No, it's not a problem.
  2. Maybe but only to check you don't carry more than 10K in cash which you'd need to report.
  3. Access, I believe yes but that's likely to be not relevant.
  4. Bring? Noone carries piles of cash any more to cover their stay, everyone uses debit/credit cards.

Altogether: no, this is not a likely avenue of questioning.

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  • It potentially IS a problem. If the OP does not have enough funds to support themselves for the duraction of their stay (in the opinion of the Immigration Officer) then they might be turned away.
    – CMaster
    Feb 8, 2016 at 10:31
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There are two reasons why they asked you this question. One is that they want to be sure that you have enough money for the time that you'll be in Canada and enough to leave as well... Then the second one is that there are some limitations in the amount of money you can travel with. For instance, if you had indicated that you would come with 1 million CAD, they would probably have questioned by you were traveling with so much money.

The delta between what you have declared and what you really have doesn't really matter as long as it isn't significant.

To be honest, I believe these kind of controls are rather random. They will only check in details if they have some doubts or if you aren't lucky :)

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