Application process

[tina19]

Hi. I'm new to this. I'm a Canadian citizen my boyfriend is from Scotland. I'm currently living in Scotland to be with him. I'm here on a work visa. It expires November 2016. I will be sponsing him as a common law partner in January 2016 because that marks a year we have been living together. We will be applying via outland process. My question is being realistic will the process be accepted before I have to leave in november. Will it take 9 months or will it be longer. How long did it take for your application to be approved. Also is there a required amount of money you need to have for they to accept me as a sponsor? Thank you

 

[KelseyTVS]

There is no minimum income required. On the forms I believe you do have to put your income and employment, but the amount doesn't seem to matter.

I assume your application will end up at the London office, which is showing a processing time of 28 months, so you may not be able to have it done by the time you leave. I'm not totally sure how accurate the times listed on the site are, for some they are much shorter. To get a good idea, you should look around at some of the Outland application threads. I think there's a UK one, and there's one for almost every month in 2014. Take a look at those and read the spreadsheets people make documenting their application process and see how fast the London office is going in real time

 

[bigredmoose]

There is no miminum income required to sponsor your spouse, but they want to see how you will be support yourselves without relying on welfare. That's why they ask about the sponsor's employment history and income.

Do not rely on the wait times posted on CIC's website, for a few reasons. First of all, they are not averages; they represent the amount of time it took for 80% of applicants to get through. If 79% of people are approved in 3 months, but next 1% took 4 years, the site will show 4 years. It's really not a useful guide. Secondly, you don't know what visa office will handle your file. It could reasonably be London, but it could be Ottawa. Thirdly, the UK office is skewed because they recently absorbed some work from Pakistan.

Have a look on this forum for a thread called something like "UK applicants" and you'll get a much better sense of real world times. I personally believe there's a chance you could get approved prior to November, but it could certainly go longer.

The major concern for couples that aren't in Canada is proving to the CIC that they intend to return to Canada. Where will you live? Do you have a job lined up? etc etc etc

The other thing you have to worry about, given that you're applying common-law, is proving that you've lived together as a couple all this time. Lease in both names, mail addressed to both, utilities in each other's names, joint bank accounts, life insurance with the other as beneficiaries, etc etc etc.

Of course if you get married now, you'll have much less burden of proof required for your marriage and you'll get the application much earlier and for sure you'll be approved well before November 2016.

 

[kettle]

You should visit the London thread and check out the spreadsheet in my signature