Leaving Canada and re-entering in place of extending visa?

[diddagirl]

I am going to be sponsoring my b/f as a my common law on Oct 1st (Thats when we will mail the app as thats when we have been living together for 1 yr).

My boyfriend is an American living in Canada on a SWAP work visa that expires tomorrow- we have been waiting on his employer to give us the LMO # to attach to his work visa application, but long story short the work visa is no longer an option.... so we must either send out his visitor visa extension today, or he will go out of status, correct?

Alternatively, if he leaves Canada tomorrow by air- for a night or two and then re-enters, he will then have another 6 months as a visitor here, right? Just trying to figure out our options...

Thanks!
Melissa

[ella19]

hi

i did the swap visa a few years back and when my visa was up i wanted to extend it to travel around the country. I rang immigration and they told me i had to apply to extend my status as a visitor and i couldnt just leave and try to re-enter in a few days. I cant remember the reason for that, but i suppose if that was all it took, then people could pretty much stay as long as they liked by just hopping over the border and back.
So yeah he should apply to for extend his stay on a visitor visa as per the cic website, he can stay while theyre processing it anyway.

[AllisonChains08]

I may be wrong but I think you can only stay 6 months out of every 12 if that makes any sense.

[Karlshammar]

Your original entry is usually for 6 months, but it can be extended. When I first came to Canada they gave me 7 months (I assume the Immigration Officer just miscounted the months), and when I applied for an extension of visitor status they gave me an additional year on top of that.