Common law inland: red flags on PA canadian work history and sponsor family lack of support

[Reila]

Hello everybody!


Me and my boyfriend have been actively searched informations on this forum since we started preparing our application and I want to thank everybody in advance for all the important knowledge we were able to gain by looking at others people's experiences written here.


We have are in the final stage of compiling the papers. We already collected all the documents needed, filled up all the forms, wrote explanation letters to explain any unclear point and got all our friends and family's support letters as well as gathered picture and other proofs of our relationship, which genuinity we are positive will be easily proven by the documentation prepared.


That being said, we are kinda worried about some personal situations that may impact our application and we would like to know if we should hire a lawyer to handle our file because of it.


Some background:
Me and my bf met in June 2019 and became a couple not long after that. We became common law partner on December 1st, 2020 after living together and sharing finances for a year.
My side of the family and all of our friends know about us and we had some of them writing letters to show their unconditional support. My boyfriend family, instead, is not entirely aware of our relationship. His parents are religious and would like him to marry somebody that shares their beliefs. Besides, they have been going through a lot of family issues regarding the younger brother and to top it all up they had to suddenly move from the country they have been residing for decades to their home country after his dad lost his job.
My boyfriend, trying not to burden them further, has shared only part of our story with his mother but they do not know about us living together as their religion is strongly against living with a partner without being married. My boyfriend is not religious or spiritual and does not care about all that, and expressed his strong will to be with me no matter what they think. His mother conceeded to get to know me and talked to me on the phone on some occasion.
We both believe that, with time, they will accept me.


We are concerned also about my personal history in Canada.
I came here with a working holiday visa and then transitioned to study visa before meeting him. Never been out of status before nor I was denied a visa.
I was on implied status for 5 days (from when my Working holiday expired to when my study visa got approved) but I haven't stopped working during that time because I was wrongly advised I could have kept my job until my study visa arrived.
For financial reasons, during my study visa I had to work more than the allowed 20 hrs a week. I have not been caught in doing so, but since I met my boyfriend and he advised me to stop doing it I started living in fear of being deported.
Covid hit and I lost my job. From there I started avoiding making stupid mistakes again.
In order to get my diploma I had to do a co-op experience, and having found a part time job in retail I had my school accept it as a co-op and got my diploma upon completion of it. My grades were very good and I even received a certificate of excellence from the school.


We just had a consultation with a very well known firm today, that quoted us with $7500+ to take over our application.
We are not sure what to do, as we found the fees really high, and we don't know if it is really worth it considering that, beside for what I said above, our case is pretty straightforward.


All your suggestion, together with recommendation on immigration consultants and lawyer and any insight on our case would be greatly appreciated.

 

[armoured]

Your boyfriend is a PR?

 

[Reila]

Yes, he is been a PR for a couple of years and as soon as we finish my sponsorship he is set to start his citizenship application.

 

[scylla]

Hello everybody!


Me and my boyfriend have been actively searched informations on this forum since we started preparing our application and I want to thank everybody in advance for all the important knowledge we were able to gain by looking at others people's experiences written here.


We have are in the final stage of compiling the papers. We already collected all the documents needed, filled up all the forms, wrote explanation letters to explain any unclear point and got all our friends and family's support letters as well as gathered picture and other proofs of our relationship, which genuinity we are positive will be easily proven by the documentation prepared.


That being said, we are kinda worried about some personal situations that may impact our application and we would like to know if we should hire a lawyer to handle our file because of it.


Some background:
Me and my bf met in June 2019 and became a couple not long after that. We became common law partner on December 1st, 2020 after living together and sharing finances for a year.
My side of the family and all of our friends know about us and we had some of them writing letters to show their unconditional support. My boyfriend family, instead, is not entirely aware of our relationship. His parents are religious and would like him to marry somebody that shares their beliefs. Besides, they have been going through a lot of family issues regarding the younger brother and to top it all up they had to suddenly move from the country they have been residing for decades to their home country after his dad lost his job.
My boyfriend, trying not to burden them further, has shared only part of our story with his mother but they do not know about us living together as their religion is strongly against living with a partner without being married. My boyfriend is not religious or spiritual and does not care about all that, and expressed his strong will to be with me no matter what they think. His mother conceeded to get to know me and talked to me on the phone on some occasion.
We both believe that, with time, they will accept me.


We are concerned also about my personal history in Canada.
I came here with a working holiday visa and then transitioned to study visa before meeting him. Never been out of status before nor I was denied a visa.
I was on implied status for 5 days (from when my Working holiday expired to when my study visa got approved) but I haven't stopped working during that time because I was wrongly advised I could have kept my job until my study visa arrived.
For financial reasons, during my study visa I had to work more than the allowed 20 hrs a week. I have not been caught in doing so, but since I met my boyfriend and he advised me to stop doing it I started living in fear of being deported.
Covid hit and I lost my job. From there I started avoiding making stupid mistakes again.
In order to get my diploma I had to do a co-op experience, and having found a part time job in retail I had my school accept it as a co-op and got my diploma upon completion of it. My grades were very good and I even received a certificate of excellence from the school.


We just had a consultation with a very well known firm today, that quoted us with $7500+ to take over our application.
We are not sure what to do, as we found the fees really high, and we don't know if it is really worth it considering that, beside for what I said above, our case is pretty straightforward.


All your suggestion, together with recommendation on immigration consultants and lawyer and any insight on our case would be greatly appreciated.

Regarding the five days, the important date is when you started your studies, not when your study permit was approved. Anything between the time your IEC ended and your studies started was unauthorized work.

In terms of working over 20 hours per week as a student, I would say this depends on how long you did this for and how many hours. If this was consistent (i.e. for a long period of time) and / or a significant number of hours, you may want to include an LOE to declare this unauthorized work. I would stay away from saying you "had" to work over 20 hours. This makes it sound like you are failing to take responsibility for your actions. The reality is that you made a choice to violate the terms of your visa.

I don't think you need a lawyer.

 

[armoured]

Responding to the other part of your questions (scylla answered one part):
-doubt that your boyfriend's family's approval of your common law relationship matters much or at all. Write a short letter of explanation explaining the situation - religious differences. Short, factual: they do not approve and hence you do not have much contact with them as a couple.
-common law: you say you have "all the documents." Do not underestimate this: it is very important to have official documents, as many as possible, beginning from the date you began residing together (at least 12 months) - letters from friends and family will NOT meet this test. Common law applications fail because of weaknesses demonstrating that 12 month, continual residence together - not infrequently. (Demonstrating that is the minimum). If you marry before applying, it at least reduces the burden of proving your de facto spousal relationship (because it will be a legal spousal relationship).

 

[Reila]

Thank you so much for your inputs as well @armoured!

-doubt that your boyfriend's family's approval of your common law relationship matters much or at all. Write a short letter of explanation explaining the situation - religious differences. Short, factual: they do not approve and hence you do not have much contact with them as a couple.

We have wrote an explanation to this in a LOE under the section 7. Do your close friends, family and children know about your relationship? of the form imm5532e. My boyfriend explained, in a few paragraphs, his own relationship with his family and the reasons why they are not fully aware of our relationship. He also states that he is not willing to leave me as he doesn't think religion and beliefs are more important than our love.

-common law: you say you have "all the documents." Do not underestimate this: it is very important to have official documents, as many as possible, beginning from the date you began residing together (at least 12 months) - letters from friends and family will NOT meet this test. Common law applications fail because of weaknesses demonstrating that 12 month, continual residence together - not infrequently. (Demonstrating that is the minimum). If you marry before applying, it at least reduces the burden of proving your de facto spousal relationship (because it will be a legal spousal relationship).

We have passed the 365 days minimum requirements for applying as a common-law couple.
As proof of our 1 year+ relationship, we included:
- Shared apartment lease, signed as of December 1st 2019 in both of our names;
- Hydro (opened at the end of November and starting on December 1st) bills in both our names, from December 2019 to December 2020;
- Joint account (opened on December 4, 2019) statements, where you can see we both contributed and shared expenses, from December 2019 to December 2020;

To prove our common law we included:
- The statuatory declaration of common law, signed and notarized on December 4, 2020;
- CRA screenshot of our personal pages, where our status changed from "single" to "common-law" on December 2020;
- Private bank account statements with the same address dated back from December 2019;
- Tenant insurance for our apartment that included me as a spouse (he is the one paying for it) as of December 1st, 2020;
- My personal insurance changes (address change reflecting our current address made on December 1st 2019, sponsor added a beneficiary on July 2020, when it expired and I had to renew it - the first time I stipulated it I did not know my boyfriend);
- Both of our NOAs 2019 where we both have the same address;
- My 2019 T4 with our current address;
- Virgin bills for internet + personal phone in his name with our current address on it dated back from December 2019;
- Personal IDs (driving licence, Ontario ID) with the same address on it.

We were also thinking to show all of our receipts from places we visited together to have stronger proof of how our relationship evolved through time (explained in a few pages in another LOE), plus anniversary and birthday cards, personal notes we left to each other, possibly whatsapp messages and social media posts to show our friends know about us and support us.

We also prepared a set of 20 pictures starting from when we first met (June 2019) and have around 10 support letters from friend and family.

Do you think our case would raise any flag when it comes to genuineness, still?

 

[armoured]

Do you think our case would raise any flag when it comes to genuineness, still?

It sounds like you have documented well and carefully (not that I've checked for completeness). Don't feel I am in a position to say whether any obvious flags - other factors outside the scope of your questions/info shared may matter.

Again, my personal view is safer to marry and remove that question from the equation. But that's your personal choice, and not all share my view.

 

[Reila]

It sounds like you have documented well and carefully (not that I've checked for completeness). Don't feel I am in a position to say whether any obvious flags - other factors outside the scope of your questions/info shared may matter.

Again, my personal view is safer to marry and remove that question from the equation. But that's your personal choice, and not all share my view.

We will definitely want to marry in the future (we also wrote about it in our relationship letter), when this pandemic will give us the possibility to do it having our friends and family by our sides celebrating this milestone with us. We both feel like it would be wrong to rush it only in order to get things sorted our for my visa.

 

[Joeydocs]

We will definitely want to marry in the future (we also wrote about it in our relationship letter), when this pandemic will give us the possibility to do it having our friends and family by our sides celebrating this milestone with us. We both feel like it would be wrong to rush it only in order to get things sorted our for my visa.

Your proofs sound great.

 

[armoured]

We will definitely want to marry in the future (we also wrote about it in our relationship letter), when this pandemic will give us the possibility to do it having our friends and family by our sides celebrating this milestone with us. We both feel like it would be wrong to rush it only in order to get things sorted our for my visa.

You can have a civil marriage and a separate celebration at the time of your choosing.

Marriage is a legal structure for a spousal relationship. There is nothing wrong about entering into a (genuine) marriage to formalise that spousal relationship for a practical, legal reason (including visa).

And while marriage/common law spousal relations are not identical legally, they are similar in many respects - that's why they're called common law / de facto to begin with.

Or put differently: right now you have collected documents and resided together for just over a year in order to demonstrate your common law relationship for the purpose of sorting out your visa. How is that different than getting legally married for the same purpose?

But again, your decision; I don't understand the reasoning, but entirely up to you.

 

[Reila]

Your proofs sound great.

That is good to know. We prepared a lot in advance and worked hard to gain all the documents deemed necessary (and even more!).
Still, after the consultation with the law firm today we were left kind of hanging thinking that we still might get a refusal for the above mentioned reasons.
I know that that selling their services is the whole point of these firms, but even thought we were very diligent and explained in details everything we thought could even let them wonder, we feel like our case needs some support from a knowledgeable professional.

Would you recommend going for a much less expensive document reviews instead? $7000+, even if our case is not exactly straightforward and simple, still feel like a huge waste of money...

 

[Canada2020eh]

That is good to know. We prepared a lot in advance and worked hard to gain all the documents deemed necessary (and even more!).
Still, after the consultation with the law firm today we were left kind of hanging thinking that we still might get a refusal for the above mentioned reasons.
I know that that selling their services is the whole point of these firms, but even thought we were very diligent and explained in details everything we thought could even let them wonder, we feel like our case needs some support from a knowledgeable professional.

Would you recommend going for a much less expensive document reviews instead? $7000+, even if our case is not exactly straightforward and simple, still feel like a huge waste of money...

I agree with you comment of being a waste of money. I think you have a strong case, you are well prepared and seem to have researched it well. I don't think that you even need to hire somebody to review your app but it's up to you, sometimes a consultant will try to cast doubt on an aspect of your app to get more of your business, A large percentage of people do it all on their own, as long as you understand all the forms I think you are good to go. Do a final thorough review yourselves with the long version of the application process, make sure it's all signed and dated. Good luck.