viprewind said:
Thanks FKL,
I did the questionnaire on CIC website and it gave me the option to change my status. You are correct about my situation, I have 6 months max, no health care done(I am from Jamaica, so unless it is the health sector, we typically do not do medicals). I completed the form in its entirety and I got the option to change my condition.
What are your thoughts.
You are most welcome. The health care question is also about whether you are eligible for health care in Canada (do you have health card? A visitor doesn't but a resident trv holder as a dependent spouse does get it).
When you apply online, it doesn't necessarily mean the application is processed in side Canada though the likelihood with "Extend your stay" is that it would be indeed processed in Canada. Most likely you are good to go and get processed. But there is a slight risk that an officer could question this and transfer the file to outside Canada (your country of residence before VISITING Canada).
CIC in these cases can be very unpredictable.
For instance, I came here a few years ago on a NOC A job LMIA based work permit, my spouse got SOWP and kids got open study permits. We had been here for a few years, when I got a new job and received LMIA exempt skilled job work permit for a top well known company.
I applied for my dependents separately because my new work permit was issued at border. My SOWP was approved but for kids they actually refused citing "we need proof of admission to institution" to approve open study permit. Note that these are kids under 9 - going to primary school who are my dependents.
Normally this is the other way round, you need them to get study permit first on the basis of which school gives them admission. Obviously we couldn't get that if we weren't already here. But since my kids were already in school, it wasn't a big deal to get that letter and reapply.
Note that this was being done by a major law firm on behalf of my employer and the lawyer clearly told me "the law certainly does not require dependents under 18 of a Skilled wp holder to provide any kind of admission for study permit. However, CIC visa office has a lot of jurisdiction over requesting additional documents even if they are not required. And there is no formal process to appeal against their decision, which would be more time consuming and uncertain. So it is best to just get the docs they required and reapply"
So we did exactly as advised. Obviously I wasn't paying the fee (the employer was). And also note that we were at a stage of PR approval at this point already (Passport request) as well.
The reason of my explaining all of this here is, you can expect CIC to take ANY decision and you are already trying to take advantage of a narrow privilege. So by all means try this out, but do not expect it to be your right. They can simply refuse and there is little you can do about it. Hopefully it won't go that way (as it mostly gets through), Good luck.
