Refused Visitor Extension due to 179(b) of the IRPR

[ivanleite]

Hello,


I'm a PR and I'm sponsoring my wife under the family class. She moved to Canada in January. When she arrived with an ETA she was only granted a MONTH to stay. We applied for a extension so we could actually gather all documents and apply for the sponsorship. We waited 6 months for an answer and never got one. We got afraid too much time has passed so we went and applied for the sponsorship. Today we got a reply for the extension and she was denied. We still haven't received the sponsorship AOR, but we the package was delivered to the processing centre on 2020-08-21.

This is the motive they stated (they actually put it twice just like I'm showing here).

• I am not satisfied that you will leave Canada at the end of your stay as a temporary
resident, as stipulated in paragraph 179(b) of the IRPR, based on the length of your proposed
stay in Canada.
• I am not satisfied that you will leave Canada at the end of your stay as a temporary
resident, as stipulated in paragraph 179(b) of the IRPR, based on the purpose of your visit.

This seems bizarre to me as she's asking to extend the visitor visa until we she gets the PR.

Are we able to do appeal or to apply for restoration or anything? Does that mean she needs to leave the country and we lost our PR application too?

 

[primaprime]

What are her ties to her home country? When you say she was only given a month back in January that means they issued her a visitor record, presumably because they were concerned about her home ties. There must have been some reason for this. Does she remember what they said?

At the moment she is out of status and so has 90 days to apply to restore her visitor status or leave Canada. If she does then the application will be abandoned (assuming you implied inland) and you will have to instead apply outland from scratch.

 

[ivanleite]

Thank you so much for the reply.

Regarding the home ties she doesn't have a lot at the moment. She was also entering Canada for the 5th time. She had come visit me 4 times during the last 5 years. The immigration officer at the airport said she didn't believe she was coming to visit me. But my wife says she was nervous and she never got to mention we were married.

So we can apply for restoration, right? We most certainly want to. If we do apply for restoration do we need to do anything related to the inland sponsorship application?


Do you have any extra tips for us when we apply for the restoration?

Thank you so much for the help. We're loosing our minds here as we do not want to live apart.

 

[primaprime]

You could apply for restoration with a letter of explanation about how you are married and applying for sponsorship, but she still needs to show sufficient ties to home that will compel her to go back if the PR application is refused. Total lack of family, a home/apartment, etc. there can be an issue.

 

[ivanleite]

She does have an apartment there and family. What can we show them to better illustrate these ties?

 

[Islander216]

Very strange occurrences.

If she has an ETA i'm assuming she comes from a visa free country, in which case why was she getting grilled by the immigration officer when she entered Canada and only given a one month stay? Why did the immigration officer say they didn't believe she didn't come to see you, and why wouldn't your wife lead with the fact that she was coming to visit you and you were married?

Something doesn't seem to add up.

I think you need to ask your wife for a thorough account of what happened when she went through immigration.

If she was only given 1 month when she was eligible for 6 months, then the likelihood of her extending her stay is slim to none.

You need to get more information from her on what happened. What questions were she asked? What were her responses?

 

[ivanleite]

If I'm completely honest, a shady consultant said it was better not to say she was married. So she said we were just friends. I believe this is the problem we're facing. I have no idea how to fix that, I mean we're married for good. We love each other and we just want to do the things the right way.

Now we spent a lot of money paying for the fees, documents translations and everything else. Should we just give up and go back to our country? I mean I have my PR since 2017, I never had any problems with taxes or the law. My wife parents support her financially and so do I as she cannot work in Canada.

Please give us some light

 

[Islander216]

Her answers likely didn't convince the immigration officer, you have to understand these guys are pros, they do this for a living and they have extensive training on assessing people based on their answers and how they act.

When you applied for the extension, they saw she was only given a month instead of 6 months, and already saw that immigration were not convinced by her answers. At least this is my interpretation of events.

My take is it's very unlikely she will be able to restore her status given the way things have gone, and you are better off with her returning to her country of origin, and then sponsoring her from there.

She's already done something which counts as misrepresentation, i would not risk trying to sponsor her from within Canada. Besides, she must have a legal status here for her to do that successfully.

You can always enlist the help of an immigration lawyer to figure out how you could potentially do it, but it seems ill advised for you to sponsor her when she said she wasn't married to you when she entered the country.

 

[ivanleite]

Thanks for the information. I understand what you said about misrepresentation, but I'm not sure if it's the case. She was really nervous, it was a big chance in her life and from what she tells me the officer was very rude from the beginning.

As I mentioned we already applied for the inland. Even with that you suggest just leaving that application behind and starting everything from scratch and loosing all the time and money we used in this application?

If we apply for the restoration would it hurt a possible future outland process? We're both from Brazil, from the same city, we have 15 years of friendship and 5 of dating. We would like to avoid going back now due to COVID and everything. If doesn't hurt, why shouldn't I try the restoration?

 

[Copingwithlife]

Very strange occurrences.

If she has an ETA i'm assuming she comes from a visa free country, in which case why was she getting grilled by the immigration officer when she entered Canada and only given a one month stay? Why did the immigration officer say they didn't believe she didn't come to see you, and why wouldn't your wife lead with the fact that she was coming to visit you and you were married?

Something doesn't seem to add up.

I think you need to ask your wife for a thorough account of what happened when she went through immigration.

If she was only given 1 month when she was eligible for 6 months, then the likelihood of her extending her stay is slim to none.

You need to get more information from her on what happened. What questions were she asked? What were her responses?

Not strange at all . ETA doesn’t guarantee a six month stay upon arrival. Each traveller is evaluated upon entry . As well if the individual visited 4x in 5 years , how long was each stay ? If they stayed longer than a usual visitor , of course thats going to raise the level of scrutiny the visitor will get . The border officer isn’t meant to be arriving visitors friends . They are trained to evaluate each person during the questioning

 

[Islander216]

Thanks for the information. I understand what you said about misrepresentation, but I'm not sure if it's the case. She was really nervous, it was a big chance in her life and from what she tells me the officer was very rude from the beginning.

As I mentioned we already applied for the inland. Even with that you suggest just leaving that application behind and starting everything from scratch and loosing all the time and money we used in this application?

If we apply for the restoration would it hurt a possible future outland process? We're both from Brazil, from the same city, we have 15 years of friendship and 5 of dating. We would like to avoid going back now due to COVID and everything. If doesn't hurt, why shouldn't I try the restoration?

I completely understand the circumstances, i'm not making a moral judgment on what happened, it's just the legal aspect in relation to saying something which is not true in this situation. It would be considered misrepresentation by IRCC, even if I understand she was given bad advice and that the officer was rude. Trust me, i've been through that here, multiple times, they can be very rude. Now i'm just advising you on how things stand currently.

This is how i see it, your wife currently has no legal status in Canada, and your sponsorship application will not be approved if she doesn't, because she must maintain a legal status here while your sponsorship application is being processed. So because she is now out of status, there is no chance it gets approved from everything that i know and have read about it. You can have that confirmed by an immigration lawyer.

On what basis are you going to apply for restoration? You can't apply for restoration based on your spousal sponsorship, it's a bit like putting the cart before the horse. You have to have a legal status to base your spousal sponsorship application not the other way round. I don't see how you could do that, you can try but again, on what basis?

I can't speak to whether it will hurt a future outland application.

I think you need legal advice.

 

[ivanleite]

She only used the ETA twice. Brazil needed a visa before that. She also got the visa before. She always left the country before the stipulated date.

The only thing I can think is that the officer tough she overstayed. Because she came in November. But she did not. She left. and I went to Brazil in December for us to get married.

 

[Islander216]

Not strange at all . ETA doesn’t guarantee a six month stay upon arrival. Each traveller is evaluated upon entry . As well if the individual visited 4x in 5 years , how long was each stay ? If they stayed longer than a usual visitor , of course thats going to raise the level of scrutiny the visitor will get . The border officer isn’t meant to be arriving visitors friends . They are trained to evaluate each person during the questioning

I think you misunderstood what i said, i'm not saying it guarantees a six month stay, but the immigration officer would base the decision of not granting the person a maximum stay based on something concrete. This is what is a strange occurrence, they must have found something suspicious or inconsistent about what she said or her circumstances.

Also, Brazil is not an ETA country unless you have a previous visa in the last 10 years for Canada or the U.S.

I agree, the length of each stay would be a factor.

 

[Islander216]

She only used the ETA twice. Brazil needed a visa before that. She also got the visa before. She always left the country before the stipulated date.

The only thing I can think is that the officer tough she overstayed. Because she came in November. But she did not. She left. and I went to Brazil in December for us to get married.

Yeah but again, even if she remained within the dates, if it is for an extended period, it would arouse suspicion.

If for example you enter 4 separate times and remained for a period of 6 months each time in the last 5 years, it's obvious that you are a candidate for overstaying or trying to remain permanently in Canada. It's a question of intent then.

 

[ivanleite]

the most time she spent was 60 days and we have how to prove it. Every other time she came was for like 30 days. Same with this last time. She came to spend her birthday (October 20) and left middle November. She never even wanted to live in Canada before, I had a hard time convincing her. She never had any problems with visas. She visited several countries in Europe and several times US.

I believed we could apply for extension while the PR process is decided. We do have ways to prove financial support and ties to home country. But you're saying even with that applying for a restoration is not valid?