Planning to live in wife's country as sponsorship is being processed, any catch?

[fandv]

Hi people,

I have some questions, but first and foremost, some facts:

1. I am a Canadian citizen, living in Canada.

2. My future wife is an Indonesian citizen, living in Indonesia.

3. We are getting married in Indonesia, in October 2012.

4. Shorly after the October 2012 wedding, I'll obtain an Indonesian permanent residency, because I will live there for a while starting in October 2012 (and my Canadian employer is kind enough to let me work remotely from there, because being an IT consultant, my work can be done from any locations with a computer and Internet connection).

Meanwhile during my stay in Indonesia, I will do an outland sponsorship for my future wife (we'll submit the application to the CIC in Singapore), so that eventually I can bring her to Canada.

5. I'll stay in Indonesia until she gets her Canadian PR (or probably conditional PR, due to the new regulations.)


So based on the above conditions, my questions are:

1. Anything important that I should be aware of? Will my stay in Indonesia, as the sponsorship is being processed, be frowned upon by the CIC?

2. Is it in fact okay for me to live outside of Canada (i.e.: Indonesia) as the sponsorship is being processed by the CIC?

Do you guys think that in the sponsorship application, I will need to write a letter, explaining to the CIC that we will both be eventually settling in Canada? If that is the case, what sort of proofs do I have to show them, to prove our (especially my) intention of settling in Canada?

3. Sometime in 2013 (probably during the Canadian summer), I plan to go to Canada with my future wife (a 2 week vacation, basically). Obviously she will need to obtain a tourist visa. Do you guys think it's okay if along with her tourist visa application, I just write a letter to the Canadian immigration, stating that we just want to go vacation for 2 weeks in Canada, after which we will go back to Indonesia? I mean, come on...she will go back to Indonesia (and she has a permanent full time job there!) WITH ME, so I really don't think the immigration have any reasons to suspect her of overstaying here illegally. I think I will get her to ask her boss to write a letter, stating that she will go back to Indonesia at the end of our 2 week stay. What do you think?

4. Any other important facts I should know of?

Cheers!

[Leon]

1. As a citizen, you are allowed to sponsor a spouse while living outside Canada IF... (2.) you convince immigration that you and your wife are both planning on moving to Canada when she gets her PR.  This could be helped with things like having a job which you do, having arranged housing, having friends and relatives write letters to support your plans, having plans on what your wife will be doing in Canada.

3. They can issue a TRV if they don't think she will overstay.  I do not know how difficult the embassy in Indonesia is.  Some of them seem to think people will overstay no matter what.  You will just have to put together a convincing package for them and try it out.

4. Don't forget to include quality proof of your relationship being genuine, info on how you met, emails, phonebills and the like.

[fandv]

1. As a citizen, you are allowed to sponsor a spouse while living outside Canada IF... (2.) you convince immigration that you and your wife are both planning on moving to Canada when she gets her PR.  This could be helped with things like having a job which you do, having arranged housing, having friends and relatives write letters to support your plans, having plans on what your wife will be doing in Canada.

3. They can issue a TRV if they don't think she will overstay.  I do not know how difficult the embassy in Indonesia is.  Some of them seem to think people will overstay no matter what.  You will just have to put together a convincing package for them and try it out.

4. Don't forget to include quality proof of your relationship being genuine, info on how you met, emails, phonebills and the like.

Thanks a lot for the reply Leon. Some more questions based on your above reply:

1. The thing is, I don't feel like buying a house, or even renting a place, if I am not even certain if my future wife will get the PR. But then you said about arranged housing as a proof of my intention to settle back here....hmmm it seems to be a catch 22 then. My parents and a lot of my relatives and friends are in Canada.......do you think their letters (along with the letter from my employer) is enough?! I really hope so...

2. Yes I'll do everything within my power to convince that we'll just vacation in Canada for 2 weeks. But just in case her TRV doesn't get approved, do you think it can jeopardise the sponsorship/PR application?

3. With regards to quality proofs of the relationship's being genuine: yes I do have everything documented properly (because our relationship is indeed genuine, and we both have nothing to hide. We just want to do the right things and follow the rules :-)). Now that you mentioned about it, that really got me thinking though! The emails and MSN/Skype chat logs are mostly in Indonesian though (I am formerly Indonesian, so I can still read, write, and speak Indonesian fluently). Do you think it's a big problem?! If I were to print all the emails and chat logs, probably there would be hundreds if not thousands of pages....there's no way I can possibly translate them all to English.
What's your suggestion?

[Leon]

1. The thing is, I don't feel like buying a house, or even renting a place, if I am not even certain if my future wife will get the PR. But then you said about arranged housing as a proof of my intention to settle back here....hmmm it seems to be a catch 22 then. My parents and a lot of my relatives and friends are in Canada.......do you think their letters (along with the letter from my employer) is enough?! I really hope so...

A letter from your employer stating that you worked for them in Canada before and the deal was that you could work for them online from Indonesia for a period of time and would then come back.
A letter from your parents or other relatives stating that they know of your plans to move to Canada when your wife gets her PR and that you can live with them while you look for housing.
More detailed plans about what your wife plans to do in Canada as in "She is trained as an xxx and will be looking for a job in that field.  Where we plan to be living in the city of yyyy there are good chances of her getting a job in that field."  Then print out some online job ads for the kind of jobs she wants to apply for.

2. Yes I'll do everything within my power to convince that we'll just vacation in Canada for 2 weeks. But just in case her TRV doesn't get approved, do you think it can jeopardise the sponsorship/PR application?

Nope, no effect if the TRV is refused.  The two applications are unrelated.  TRV may be refused based on risk of overstay but a PR can not be refused based on risk of overstay because a PR can not be overstayed.

3. With regards to quality proofs of the relationship's being genuine: yes I do have everything documented properly (because our relationship is indeed genuine, and we both have nothing to hide. We just want to do the right things and follow the rules :-)). Now that you mentioned about it, that really got me thinking though! The emails and MSN/Skype chat logs are mostly in Indonesian though (I am formerly Indonesian, so I can still read, write, and speak Indonesian fluently). Do you think it's a big problem?! If I were to print all the emails and chat logs, probably there would be hundreds if not thousands of pages....there's no way I can possibly translate them all to English.
What's your suggestion?

You don't need them all.  Just some samples.  I heard of one couple that took a screen shots of their email inbox to show all the emails from their spouse.  Include some of the emails too but they definitely do not need all of them.