busnba said:
Hi,
Any advice or thoughts here would be much appreciated. I landed on August 13th 2012 and received my PR Card which is valid until October 2017. However I have not been back in the country for strong reasons. I had planned to come back in 2014 to settle permanently unfortunately my partner at the time now husband suffered an accident late 2013 leaving him with 70% disability and I was the primary caregiver.
I am now planning to travel this August 2015 to re-enter Canada to meet residency obligations as well as apply for spousal sponsorship. My questions are : in case I need to leave Canada and come back to see him, will I be allowed to re-enter or is there a time limit? Will I also be allowed to appeal any lapses in obligation based on humanitarian and compassionate grounds as I have all the evidence with medical/police reports etc.
thanks for your help,
- bit confused by all the information out there
Overall: the only sure way to keep your PR status is to comply with the PR Residency Obligation. If you fail to meet the PR RO (falling short of 730 days presence) any and all H&C grounds must be considered. There is no guarantee, however, the H&C grounds will suffice to overcome a breach of the PR RO. So long as you continue to have a valid PR card, your first PR card, most reports are still indicating that POE officers are being relatively lenient. I suspect the leniency dissipates, however, once it is obvious the PR is in breach, probably depending on how much in breach.
In contrast, one of the difficult choices you face is when to make the application to sponsor. Technically, so long as you are in compliance with the PR RO, you are eligible to sponsor. And indeed, if you stay in compliance, there should be no serious issue with this (relative to your eligibility as a sponsor). But if you do not return to Canada until right before the third anniversary of the date you landed, that would mean not traveling abroad at all until you have been in Canada 730 days.
Do NOT apply to sponsor or to obtain a new PR card unless or until you are in actual compliance with the 730 days residency obligation. Until August 13, 2017, you are in compliance so long as the total number of days you have been in Canada since landing, plus the number of days left before August 13, 2017, adds up to 730. That said, to make the sponsorship application and then leave Canada while the application is pending, such that you will fall short of meeting the PR RO, would be very risky.
For anyone in breach of the PR RO, or even a PR cutting it close, making any application to CIC significantly elevates the risk of a PR residency examination/investigation being initiated.
Observation: You are cutting it very close as is. As you have already experienced,
stuff happens. Flights are cancelled. Family obligations loom and interfere. Accidents happen. The PR Residency Obligation, as the courts have said, is intentionally generous to allow flexibility for the vast range of complex situations and contingencies that may confront immigrants in their effort to make the move to Canada. What the courts mean when they say this is that a great deal of leeway is built into the obligation itself, so any further leeway depends on truly extraordinary circumstances.
Thus, while of course the situation you are in deserves compassionate treatment, the extent to which CBSA or CIC will
waive the obligation to be present in Canada is not certain, will depend on all the relevant factors
at the time compliance with the PR RO is questioned, and there is no guarantee that further leeway will be given.
As already noted, new PRs, those within the first five years since landing, seem to still experience quite a bit of leeway at the POE, particularly those who have clearly made an effort to establish a life in Canada and otherwise appear to deserve keeping PR status.
This is particularly relevant to your question about whether you will be allowed to re-enter Canada if you have to leave Canada again before you fully meet the PR RO. The longer you have been in Canada before leaving, and the shorter your time abroad, thus overall the less in breach of the PR RO you are when returning, the better your odds. Recognizing, however, that once you are in breach (and for the first five years, the key date is August 13, 2017, the fifth year anniversary of landing, the date by which you need to have been in Canada 730 days to avoid being in breach) your
PR status would be at risk.
I recognize the difficulty of the choices involved, but if there is a significant chance you will be leaving Canada between your return and when you will actually meet the 730 days in Canada obligation, probably better to postpone making the sponsorship application. I am not at all certain, but my sense is that if you have a sponsorship application in process, leave Canada, and fall short of meeting the PR RO, there is a significantly greater risk of more strict scrutiny when attempting to return to Canada again . . . I am extrapolating and to some extent guessing in making this particular observation, and it could depend a great deal on the attitude of the particular officer you deal with at the POE upon your return, as well as a number of other factors (if you are just three days short after having spent a full year in Canada, for example, probably not a problem).
Again, the only sure way to preserve your PR status will be to stay in compliance with the PR Residency Obligation.
