USA to Canadian spouce

[dredavi]

After reading a bunch of posts here i havent found the right answer for my situation.  My fiance and i are wanting to live in Canada. He is an American and was told at the border in Sarnia that for him to be admitted into Canada for the purpose of getting married and residing here we need... a marriage license, his medical insurance papers, and my financial papers (t4's or NOC, to prove that i can support him while waiting for his PR app to go through) so he can be admitted into canada for the purpose of getting married.  And it is my understanding that once he is in Canada we can get married and apply for his PR as a spouce.

So my question(s) is... is there anything else we should have at the border with us just in case? has anyone been in this situation before and is there anything we are missing or were not told about? If a visitor visa only lasts 6 months and the application takes more than that. Is it easy to get an extention of visitor status or switch to a work visa? and if for some reason he is denied PR, i understand NO appeal may be made form within Canada, but can we re-apply with him outside Canada?

[Leon]

Normally people don't go to Canada stating they are planning to get married, they just go saying they are coming to visit and get married anyway.  It's a lot simpler.  Now since he's already told them, he's probably flagged in the system and you'll need to get all those papers together before he'll be admitted.

Anyway, once you get married, you can choose to do an inland Canada application or an outland application. 

If you do inland, you should apply for visit visa extension and open work permit at the same time so he will not have to worry about his visit status and once he gets first stage approval which currently takes 6-7 months, he will get his open work permit.  Getting the PR can take 12-18 months total or so I have heard.  If immigration finds a problem with your case, they might not deny you right away but instead send your file to a local office that would look at your case more closely but depending on their workload, it might delay your case 1-3 years and he would not get a first stage approval or work permit in that case so he'd be stuck in Canada without working.  It is not adviced to travel outside of Canada while you are doing an inland application because if he's denied entry for any reason, your application is gone.  If you were refused completely, he would have to leave Canada and then you could still try an outland application.

If you do an outland application from the start, he can be in Canada as a visitor or he can go to the US.  The sponsorship process of that will be about a month and getting his PR from Buffalo another 5 months or so.  If he was called for an interview, he'd have to do it in the US.  He would also have to make sure that his visit visa didn't expire if he chooses to stay in Canada the whole time.  If an outland application is denied, you'd be able to appeal it, might take another year.