I will save you a lot of headache as I've been though this situation over the last year. First, you mentioned that you were starting the PR process January 2012... are you getting married?
My fiance finally found a job in a city close to the border July 2010. At that time we went to the Canadian consulate in Buffalo and asked for a Visitor Visa... and they turned us away saying that he didn't need one because he was American and has the ability to cross for 6 months at a time. He already had a Nexus card from several months earlier. He continued to work in the US and cross the border daily. He already had a Nexus card and the border people began to recognize him and were very friendly. That came to an abrupt stop 6 months later... their computers will 'red flag' you because it's obvious that he was living in Canada. Our wedding was planned for July 2nd 2011 with many things paid for. Immigration did not care. They refused him entry January 21st 2011. He was then given wrong information then as well. The only thing we could do to rectify the situation was to push up our wedding date. We decided to get married on Valentine's day. Once we could prove that the wedding was only a few weeks away, they gave him a 2 month "Visitor Record". Once we were married, we went back and got a 6 month extension to do the PR application. It's still 2 months before that one expires but we're waiting for the FBI clearances to arrive so we're going to have to get another extension.
Now that he's been 'red flagged' he has to explain every single day to the border officer and 25-50% of the time he gets sent in to discuss with an immigration officer.
Soooo... if we had to do it over, we would have insisted on a Visitor Record right in the beginning AND even more importantly, we would have also changed our wedding date to something sooner than we did (ie. within the first 6 months of him moving here)... it would have made life so much easier.
We're hoping that once he finally is a PR, we can get that red flag removed and maybe get back his Nexus. The Nexus makes life so much easier as crossing the border can be very time consuming.
I don't know if this helped at all, but as soon as I saw your post, I had to respond. If I can help in any way, let me know. I'm a newbie on this forum too but if I can help, I will.
