Need urgent help with residency obligations

[jorj]

Hi, I am glad to find this forum. Hope someone will help me. Here is my situation:

My application for immigration was approved and I am required to land within few months. Meanwhile, I got a job offer in the UK for 4 years. I understand the obligation to stay in Canada for 2 years within a 5 years period. That is my problem because after the 4 years in the UK, I will have only 1 year left so I will lose my PR.

So I need your advice on the best strategy to follow. these are the options I have (in order of preference) which of course does not include declining the job offer !

1- Asking for an exemption from the Canadian authoroties to allow me start counting the 730 days after i finish my 4 years in the UK.

2- Simply do the landing and stay for 4 years in the UK, then going back to Canada, and when the customs officer asks for how long I had been out of Canada, I would answer 2 weeks for example !

3- Giving the PR up and reapplying after 2 years for example. In that case will my previous declining of the PR affect the future application, kind of being not serious ?


BTW, I am not married and my address in Canada will be my Aunt's house. Also, i do prefer to settle in Canada after all.


Please, can anyone kindly analyse my situation and tell me the possibility of the options I mentioned ?


Thanks in advance

[Leon]

1. You can try it but unless you have humane and compassionate grounds to be staying in the UK, sick parent for example, it's unlikely they will approve it and even then they might not approve it.  They already relaxed a rules quite a bit a few years ago, it used to be that you had to stay at least 6 months out of each 12 so they feel like people now have more than enough flexibility.  You become PR because you want to settle in Canada, not to keep in your back pocket for when it comes in handy.

2.  Bad idea.  If you say and write on your customs form that you were gone only 2 weeks and they find out and they do have their ways to find out, or say if somebody rats on you, you have lied to immigration and will lose your PR and it will be a lot harder for you to re-apply.

2b. Use your vacation to go to Canada every year, then you can say to customs that you were gone 1 year which is allowed.  If you are lucky, they will not catch you and at the end of the 4 years, you can go to Canada and stay the full 730 days before you apply for your PR card renewal.

3.  Your best idea so far.

4.  You could also try to negociate the 4 year job down to 3.

[jorj]

Thanks very much for your response ! I really appreciate that.

Ok, I want to discuss option #2b  you suggested ! I think there shouldn't be any problems with the customs officer when there are still 2 years or more remaining in the PR card. But when I try to re-enter Canada and the card has less than two years left (which will be the case after i finish the 4 years in the UK), Do you think the officer will not ask about the 2 year requirement directly ? Will he be able to know my travel history and will there be any stamps on my passport?

As for the third option which you recommended most, do you think my future re-application will be affected by previously declining the PR ?

Thanks again.

[Leon]

As for 2b, they don't scan your passport when you leave.  If you are coming home to the UK, they probably don't stamp your passport on entry?  If I am right, they can only see from your passport all the times that you entered Canada, not when you left so they can not see from that alone if you are living in Canada and vacationing in the UK or the other way around.

I do not know if they keep a record of it if you said you were gone a year, come back a year later and say you were gone a year again.  Some people have gotten into Canada even after they were supposed to have lost their PR because they had been gone too long.  Others have been stopped and told to prove that they have been living in Canada if they want to keep their PR.  I don't really know how they know.  They share information with the US border I know that much.

I have travelled with only months left on my PR card and nobody said anything to me when I came back.

As for the future application thing, I really don't know if that would affect anything.  There is nothing in immigration regulations that says you can not apply a million times.  Since it would only be for the 2nd time and you can include a cover letter explaining why you didn't land that time, I think it should be fine.

If you were to apply again, do you qualify under the new rules?  List of 38 occupations etc.?  Then again, in 4 years, the rules might have changed again to something else.

[eduardoF]

1- Asking for an exemption from the Canadian authoroties to allow me start counting the 730 days after i finish my 4 years in the UK.

2- Simply do the landing and stay for 4 years in the UK, then going back to Canada, and when the customs officer asks for how long I had been out of Canada, I would answer 2 weeks for example !

3- Giving the PR up and reapplying after 2 years for example. In that case will my previous declining of the PR affect the future application, kind of being not serious ?

1- Not really an option, as Leon said, when you apply for PR, it's because you intend to settle in Canada, and not just to have a card under your sleeve;

2- If you spend 4 years in Canada, you'll necessarily lose your PR, because you cannot fulfill your residency requirements, even if you spend all of the 5th year in Canada. Sure, you can try lying, but there's a chance you'll get caught.

3- You do not need "give up" PR. You can simply land and go back to the UK. Who knows, life changes, maybe you'll find out the job is not so good, or you could get fired, or you could decide you had enough... Then, yes, after 3 years, you will not be able to meet the residency requirements, it makes sense to give up (not quite sure it is possible, but I think so) and re-apply.

As to your last question: I don't know if they care whether you had PR and lost it. But the new rules state that to get PR (at least through the Skilled Worker program, which is what I assume you applied for), you need to have experience in one of 38 selected jobs. Which means, if you give up your PR now and re-apply, you may actually not be elegible.

[jorj]

As to your last question: I don't know if they care whether you had PR and lost it. But the new rules state that to get PR (at least through the Skilled Worker program, which is what I assume you applied for), you need to have experience in one of 38 selected jobs. Which means, if you give up your PR now and re-apply, you may actually not be elegible.

Thanks eduardoF ! In fact, I am still in those 38 jobs, but may be after 2 or 3 years the 38 jobs will shrink into 10 or something and i find myself out !! So, i agree with you and i wont give it up now.

I have travelled with only months left on my PR card and nobody said anything to me when I came back.

Thanks again Leon for your valuable opinions. Let us say that I managed to get into Canada after the 4 years then stayed 730 days in Canada. When I apply for renewal of the PR card and give my travel history without lying, it will be apparant that the 730 days were within 6 years and not 5, so how can  get over that?

One last thing, If i could delay my landing as far as possible and cut the 4 years down by few months (still not sure if I can do that) in order to have the 730 days available just before the PR expires. So am I free to do the landing, dissappear then return back after being out for 3 continuous years ? Are there any problems i can expect in that case ?

Thanks for your patience.