ostermark said:
This gets somewhat complicated... I am an American who was married to a Canadian for 20+ years. Before getting married I had a "special status" due to being an athlete and was able to work in Canada, which I did for 5-6 years, on a seasonal basis. After getting married I got the PR status and worked, lived and paid taxes for over 15 years. I even now still get a small pension from the BC Government (worked both for BC and Manitoba). We got divorced 10 years ago and I left to live in the US. I had PR status which expired some years ago and have only visited Canada in the past 10 years. I do not meet any resident obligations. Do I have any options to renew my PR status? I include a lot of information so as to explore any options that you may come up with. At first glance, based on my preliminary research--I am totally out of luck. Is there any hope for me?
Thanks for your time!
You have been outside Canada for over 10 years so obviously do not meet the residency obligation. So any interaction with CIC or CBSA at this point could start to revoke PR status. There are basically only 2 options for you to consider to renew your PR status.
1. Apply for PR Travel Document on H&C basis. However I highly doubt this would work since you most likely don't have valid H&C reasons to stay outside Canada 10 years. So most likely this would end in refusal and revoking of your PR status.
2. You can try to "sneak" back into Canada, remain in Canada for 2 years after which you'll be back in compliance with the RO, and then can apply to renew your PR card. To "sneak" into Canada you will basically need to cross the border, and hope CBSA doesn't report you for not meeting the RO.
If reported you would still be allowed into Canada, but even if you appealed since you don't have H&C reasons this will most likely end in revoking of your PR status after some time.
If you aren't reported by CBSA, then you must stay in Canada for
2 straight years without leaving even once (if you left, your next entry might result in reporting and revoking of PR status). During these 2 years you will not have a valid PR card, so may find it difficult to prove your PR status to whoever wants it (though it is possible without it). Also your SIN is most likely in dormant status so you would need to go to Service Canada to re-activate it. I'm not sure how difficult/easy this is with no PR card.
Anyways if you can make it 2 years, you can then apply to renew your PR card and you will continue to be a PR as long as you meet the RO going forward after that.