I recently received my PRTD from Vienna visa office and wanted to share my experience with permanent resident traevrl document application. I had to temporary leave Canada before my PR card was renewed because of a personal situation. And applied for PRTD the first day abroad. They invited me to an an interview (which was absolutely unnecessary in my case as i submitted the evidence that my residency obligations was fulfilled). It was scheduled a month from the day of application.
The scary part was that I have gotten too many irrelevant questions. It is probably because they are used to work with immigration applications (PR applications) and not with PRTD applications. It was nevertheless quite stressful knowing and seeing that an interviewer who is mistakenly thinking in the terms of PR application will be deciding whether you can get back to Canada or not based on how well settled and established professionally in Canada you are. And PRTD applications, for those who do not know, are actually submitted by those who already became immigrants but for some reasons ended up abroad without a PR card (lost, expired etc)
They issued my PRTD the same day. But during the interview when answering those questions, for a moment i thought that this is it and that I will get rejection and would probably have to spend money on a lawyer soon.
I almost became speechless when I got a question "what country do you consider your domicile" Like what the hell, who cares? (I lived in Canada for 3+ years , then studied in US for 1 year in a graduate program, later lived in EU for almost a year and then came back and lived for 10 months in Canada before recently leaving due to family situation).. I mean, even citizenship procedure does not require an intent to live in Canada any more. As long as you maintain residency requirements you are good.
The other good one was "why do you keep changing jobs and addresses in Canada so often". I could not resist and said "this is called immigration!". It is stress, uncertainty, expenditures, fighting through strong overqualification-bias and a bunch of other "perks" that come with immigration, including difficulties in securing a good job or sometimes just a job, or even a lease when you do not have a good job. In reality, I changed 2 jobs in 10 months and lived in 4 cities, all in one province, and obviously had to move a bunch of times and had temporary accommodations before I found my first lease and before finding the next... Again, who cares? It is like they are not getting that the only thing that matters for PRTD is how many days out of those 5 last years were spent in Canada and whether you have maintained your residency obligation which anybody who has spend more than requied period of time in Canada satisfies. It is pure arithmetic.
Sometimes you just have to go, regardless whether your card is ready or not, it is life. But I should say there is definitely more certainty in waiting for a PR card renewal before leaving Canada.
The scary part was that I have gotten too many irrelevant questions. It is probably because they are used to work with immigration applications (PR applications) and not with PRTD applications. It was nevertheless quite stressful knowing and seeing that an interviewer who is mistakenly thinking in the terms of PR application will be deciding whether you can get back to Canada or not based on how well settled and established professionally in Canada you are. And PRTD applications, for those who do not know, are actually submitted by those who already became immigrants but for some reasons ended up abroad without a PR card (lost, expired etc)
They issued my PRTD the same day. But during the interview when answering those questions, for a moment i thought that this is it and that I will get rejection and would probably have to spend money on a lawyer soon.
I almost became speechless when I got a question "what country do you consider your domicile" Like what the hell, who cares? (I lived in Canada for 3+ years , then studied in US for 1 year in a graduate program, later lived in EU for almost a year and then came back and lived for 10 months in Canada before recently leaving due to family situation).. I mean, even citizenship procedure does not require an intent to live in Canada any more. As long as you maintain residency requirements you are good.
The other good one was "why do you keep changing jobs and addresses in Canada so often". I could not resist and said "this is called immigration!". It is stress, uncertainty, expenditures, fighting through strong overqualification-bias and a bunch of other "perks" that come with immigration, including difficulties in securing a good job or sometimes just a job, or even a lease when you do not have a good job. In reality, I changed 2 jobs in 10 months and lived in 4 cities, all in one province, and obviously had to move a bunch of times and had temporary accommodations before I found my first lease and before finding the next... Again, who cares? It is like they are not getting that the only thing that matters for PRTD is how many days out of those 5 last years were spent in Canada and whether you have maintained your residency obligation which anybody who has spend more than requied period of time in Canada satisfies. It is pure arithmetic.
Sometimes you just have to go, regardless whether your card is ready or not, it is life. But I should say there is definitely more certainty in waiting for a PR card renewal before leaving Canada.
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