PACSed in France but never lived together to qualify as Common Law Spouse

[indie]

Hello, I am a French national living in Paris. My boyfriend is an Indian citizen. We met during one of his trips to Paris and we fell in love. We got PACSed (Pacte civil de solidarité) last year in France. I applied for my Canadian PR and I received it fairly easily.

We have never lived together for a long time but have been meeting very often in France, in India and other countries on trips. I think Canada requires us to have lived together for a period of 1 year before I declare him as Common Law Spouse and apply for family class immigration.

What is the best way for me to bring him to Canada? He can qualify himself for PR from India since he has a lot of work experience but I believe the process from India is painfully slow. We plan to go to Canada in 2012 and start living together finally!

Note: He doesn’t want to live in France because he doesn’t speak French. I have been emailing different consulates (like British, Swiss, Danish) to find out if our PACS is valid in their countries and I can sponsor him for a visa but Canada would be the ideal option for us because I am francophone and he is Anglophone.

Thank you everyone!

 

[canadianwoman]

Canada is a bilingual country, but most people speak either French or English, not both. Don't think you can go to Calgary or Vancouver, for example, and function in French while he functions in English. Montreal is effectively bilingual, but not too welcoming of Anglophones who can't speak French, job-wise and socially.

To sponsor him, you have to live with him for a year first, or get married. Conjugal sponsorship is possible - it means you have a marriage-like relationship, but are not married and have not lived together for a year. You, right now, have a conjugal relationship. Usually, though, to sponsor someone through the conjugal route, you need a good reason for not living together - such as India and France refusing to let the other national in. Not wanting to live in France because of his lack of French ability will not count as a good reason.
To sponsor him, you must be in Canada during the processing.

The easiest route to get him into Canada would either be to marry him, or to have him apply on his own for a PR. You don't want to move until 2012 anyway, so could not start the process until then - because you have to be in Canada to sponsor him. If he applies now for a PR on his own, it may be near completion by then.

 

[RobsLuv]

I agree with Canadianwoman - with an important added note. Sounds like you were already in relationship when you applied and got your PR to Canada. Be very careful, then, if you do end up applying to sponsor him, that you do not make it seem in any way that you had lived together before you immigrated. If they assume, from information that you enter into your application in support of your relationship, that you had in fact cohabitated for a period of time prior to your landing in Canada (and you did not declare him as your common-law partner then), they will exclude him from eligibility to immigrate in the Family Class stream. You don't actually have to have lived together for them to jump to this conclusion - it can only seem to them like it might be a possibility that you did, and then you find yourself in a position of having to prove that you didn't cohabitate - and that can sometimes be more difficult than proving that you did.

Anyway, just cautioning you to watch your dates - especially if you do apply to sponsor him as a common-law partner and you start using dates prior to your landing as your qualification period in a misguided attempt to substantiate the relationship more fully by showing a longer term of relationship. You have done extensive traveling together, it seems, and even though - if you wanted to apply to sponsor him as a c/l partner and that was all you had, it wouldn't be enough - they will turn around and use that exact same information against you, saying you lived together before your landing and didn't declare him.

Honestly, what Canadianwoman says about the fact that you'd have to be in Canada in order to be eligible to start the sponsorship process - when he now qualifies to apply on his own merit through FSW - it makes sense for him to start that process immediately and you'll be a lot closer to having it done by the time you want to move to Canada than you would be to have to wait until then to even start the sponsorship process. FSW aps through New Delhi appear to be being processed in approximately 14 months.

 

[indie]

Thank you both! I agree with Canadianwoman. Since I speak English, I don't care about living anywhere in Canada. I just want to live in Montreal because I like the fact that people speak French there.

With the dates in question, yes, it looks like I have to do a lot of due diligence here. Can he come to Canada on a tourist visa, we get married and he can be sponsored? I guess there's gonna be a waiting time again.

It looks the best option for us to live together is to live in India where it is fairly easy for a person like me to get a work permit and keep renewing it..

 

[canadianwoman]

With the dates in question, yes, it looks like I have to do a lot of due diligence here. Can he come to Canada on a tourist visa, we get married and he can be sponsored? I guess there's gonna be a waiting time again.

Yes, you could come to Canada, get married, and then sponsor him, if he can get a visiting visa. You would have to stay in Canada while the PR visa is being processed, and he could stay with you, even if you apply outland, by extending his visa. But the visa office in New Delhi is very fast, on average.

Are you a gay couple? Because otherwise you could just get married in France or India, you could then come here, and sponsor him while he waits in India. Then there would be no problem if he couldn't get a visitor's visa.