What if there's a passport request?

[Suin]

Hello,
on reading the posts about passport requests I got a question struck my head - if the sponsored person stays with his/her spouse in Canada on visitor's visa and the Visa Office sends a passport request, how it is possible for a foreign national in Canada stay without a passport, especially if it's gone together with all the proof of his/her legal stay in Canada?
As it's well known, some Visa Offices keep passports even for several months and staying in a foreign country without ID is quite uncomfortable and might be not safe.
What to do in this situation?
Thank you.

[mitamata]

There WILL be a passport request, they can't stamp the visa in the passport without having the passport.

Personally, I'd really hate being stuck abroad while my passport was somewhere else, but a lot of people do this. I don't know, make copies of the relevant pages and keep those as proof?
What visa office are you dealing with? Most return the passport pretty quickly. Some are tricky, like New Delhi- they will not send the passport outside of India, so you'd have to have them send it to someone in India and have that person then mail it to you in Canada. I've heard some people do this by mailing a book with the passport inside it via courier and the like.

[whoopi83]

I would agree, make copies of the relevent pages showing legal status plus your ID page and passport number.

As for not being safe, if you encountered difficulty in Canada or any country you were visiting, you could obtain consular services and if necessary an emergency document to return to your country of citizenship the same way as if you had lost your passport.

Before sending passports and birth certificates etc it is always recommended that you takes copies. 

The only real issue is that you couldn't take a holiday etc or leave Canada except to return "home", but if you're in Canada, who needs to vacation anywhere else immediately, right?  :o)

[Suin]

thank you a lot for all your replies. I get some idea now that maybe it will be even better to have notarized copies of the passport main pages - hope Canadian authorities trust Canadian notaries.