Canadian Children - non-Canadian Parents

[BCC412]

My wife and I are Americans who had prior lived, worked, and had our 2 children (now 4 & 6) in Canada. Shortly after the children's births we moved to the US and during this time, our Canadian permanent residency cards expired (in 2019). We are currently lucky enough to now be working (mostly) remote jobs for US employers, and as our children are dual Canadian/US citizens, we are looking into options to immerse our children in the Quebec (French speaking) school system while they are young enough to relatively quickly pick up the language as well as to generally get life experiences and appreciation for being Canadian.

It doesn't appear that permanent residency renewal is an efficient choice due to the gap in expiration and our lack of "requisite days in Canada". Rather it seems that my wife and I could enter for up to "183 days (or 6 months) in a 12-month period" to enroll them in school without violating a visitor visa or incurring tax obligations. And as we are working remote for US employers with no impact on the Canadian workforce, there are no "work visa" issues. Are there any other or better options or accommodations for non-Canadian parents to support ties to Canada for their Canadian minors? In our ideal scenario, we would enter the children into a Canadian/Quebec primary school for 1 full academic year.

All of the above would be post-Covid as well. Not going to pursue this during the pandemic.

Thanks in advance for the feedback.

 

[scylla]

My wife and I are Americans who had prior lived, worked, and had our 2 children (now 4 & 6) in Canada. Shortly after the children's births we moved to the US and during this time, our Canadian permanent residency cards expired (in 2019). We are currently lucky enough to now be working (mostly) remote jobs for US employers, and as our children are dual Canadian/US citizens, we are looking into options to immerse our children in the Quebec (French speaking) school system while they are young enough to relatively quickly pick up the language as well as to generally get life experiences and appreciation for being Canadian.

It doesn't appear that permanent residency renewal is an efficient choice due to the gap in expiration and our lack of "requisite days in Canada". Rather it seems that my wife and I could enter for up to "183 days (or 6 months) in a 12-month period" to enroll them in school without violating a visitor visa or incurring tax obligations. And as we are working remote for US employers with no impact on the Canadian workforce, there are no "work visa" issues. Are there any other or better options or accommodations for non-Canadian parents to support ties to Canada for their Canadian minors? In our ideal scenario, we would enter the children into a Canadian/Quebec primary school for 1 full academic year.

All of the above would be post-Covid as well. Not going to pursue this during the pandemic.

Thanks in advance for the feedback.

Unless you have officially renounced your PR status, you are still technically PRs. If you want to try to keep your PR status, you would need to re-enter Canada through a land border using a private vehicle and hope you are not reported for failing to meet the residency requirement. You would then need to live in Canada for 2 years straight to meet the residency requirement again and be able to renew your PR cards. Note that you may have difficulty getting provincial health care coverage during this time without valid PR cards.

 

[BCC412]

I'm hoping for an option that does not include renewing permanent residency. That pathway appears rather involved and perhaps not fully aligned with the reality that we don't see the likelihood of long term residency in Canada in the short or immediate term.

 

[canuck78]

I'm hoping for an option that does not include renewing permanent residency. That pathway appears rather involved and perhaps not fully aligned with the reality that we don't see the likelihood of long term residency in Canada in the short or immediate term.

If any of your employers have Canadian offices or clients/customers you won’t be able to work in Canada as visitors. You may want to get free education and healthcare for your children without paying taxes but for obvious reasons it isn’t that easy. I am sure you can register your children for French classes in the US or many larger US cities have a Lycee Francais.

 

[scylla]

I'm hoping for an option that does not include renewing permanent residency. That pathway appears rather involved and perhaps not fully aligned with the reality that we don't see the likelihood of long term residency in Canada in the short or immediate term.

- If you have no plans to try to retain your PR status, then you may want to consider proactively rennouncing to avoid any issues at the border.
- Assuming you do that, you would be entering Canada as visitors vs. returning residents
- How long you are allowed into Canada is always determined by CBSA at the border however visitors are generally given six months
- You'll want to make sure it doesn't look like you're moving to Canada or you could run into issues entering the country. This may be a bit challenging if your actual plans are to live in Canada short term. You'll want to avoid bringing up a lot of person belongings and keep it to a real minimum. OK to bring clothes but you'll want to leave behind anything that tourists normally don't bring with them.
- Explore tax laws. Once you are in Canada over a certain number of days you may be classified as factual residents and have to file a Canadian tax return. If you're looking at spending one academic year in Canada, you'll most likely need to file taxes.
- You'll need to take out private insurance for your time in Canada to cover emergencies and they pay for non-emergency care out of pocket.