Hi, I am going to be moving in with my fiance in a few months and we are currently starting the process of them sponsoring me to get Permanent Residency. I don't have many qualms about not being able to work until I gain residency, as I have money saved up and they will have enough to support us. I do however have a question regarding possible income from online work, seeing as I stream and do art commissions for people. Would I be allowed to continue making money from these sources while I lived in Canada waiting for my permanent residency?
American citizen moving in with Fiance while getting PR
- Thread starter Flacosmacko
- Start date
As long as none of your customers are Canadian or in Canada - yes.
Ah, I see. Would there be complications with said money being deposited into a Canadian bank account or would I stick with my current American bank? Thank you for your response by the way!
Ok, thank you very much, and I actually have one more thing. This streaming site allows for basically anonymous donations to the streamer. The streamer doesn't exactly know where these donations come from be it from Canada or America, are these allowed?
In that case I wouldn't engage in that activity until you are a PR. If you accept any payments from Canadians then you'll be working illegally and violating the terms of your visitor visa - which could land you in trouble and create problems for your PR application and future in Canada.
Seems like a bit of a grey area. How exactly would you be getting the payments/donations, would it be direct transfers to your bank account from the individual people that donate, or do people pay via the streaming website and then the website pays you directly?
If the website is the one actually paying you and they are not located in Canada, and if it goes to a US bank account, it may be acceptable as the actual "source" of your payments if asked would be the website, not the individuals (which you wouldn't have any record of anyways if they're anonymous).
Well the site allows for two ways to donate: directly through the website though it is more expensive for the donator and gets paid out by the american company, or directly to my american paypal account which would then be transferred to my bank account.
As I said it's a bit of a grey area. If a foreigner who has some online site that anyone in the world can make payments to happens to be in Canada as a visitor, and while in Canada someone here makes a payment to that site, that doesn't mean the work is illegal. Foreigners aren't expected to shut down their websites when they travel to Canada, just in case a Canadian happens to donate to them.
In my opinion if the non-Canadian website is paying you directly, or people are making payment to your US paypal account, that is probably fine. This is just my guess. As you said the payments are anonymous anyways, and will be going to a foreign bank account. Make sure you aren't soliciting Canadian clients while here, or doing work specifically for Canadian clients.
Alright, thank you. It's very nice to have this information when I finally do move up to Canada, though I probably have a lot more researching to do/questions to ask before I would go ahead and do this sort of thing as to not receive any repercussions.