You need to provide more info here, at least basic, to get useful feedback. Landed when? PR card still active? How many days in Canada since landing? Last visit to Canada? Just as examples of the basic info, other info may also be relevant.
Unable to meet the 730 days residence requirement due to Covid-19
- Thread starter limhockkiong
- Start date
Assuming, consistent with the topic here, you are currently NOT in compliance with the PR Residency Obligation:
There is NO means to confirm with the visa office or an immigration lawyer what will happen.
An immigration lawyer can evaluate an individual's situation and offer an OPINION as to what MIGHT happen.
And offer other helpful services, such as advising a PR about the strength of the PR's H&C case, advice about how to best present the H&C case, and assist the PR through the process, such as assisting with an appeal if a PR Travel Document application was denied, or the PR was issued a 44(1) Report upon arrival in Canada.
A visa office will NOT offer an opinion or otherwise engage in making advisory decisions.
OTHERWISE there is extensive discussion about H&C relief from the enforcement of the RO in numerous topics here, including some above in this topic. Determinations about H&C relief will almost certainly take into consideration the impact of Covid-19, to the extent it explains why a PR remained outside Canada leading to a breach of the RO. HOWEVER, Covid-19 alone will almost certainly NOT be anywhere near a sufficient explanation; that is, the PR will likely need to have other reasons supporting the H&C case in addition to the impact of Covid-19.
And how it goes will for sure VARY from one person to another, depending on the individual PR's personal situation and history. Thus, for example, anecdotal reports from RO-breach PRs who have applied for a PR TD or who were able to travel to Canada otherwise, will be little more than a clue about what MIGHT happen, what could POSSIBLY happen, and will NOT indicate or confirm what will for-sure happen to a different PR . . . even if their situations are very similar.
OVERALL . . . while there are many factors which can influence how things go, among the biggest factors (and in most cases, it is THE BIGGEST factor) is how many days the PR has been IN Canada, how many days outside Canada. Thus, the SOONER the PR returns to Canada the better CHANCE the PR has of keeping status based on H&C for a breach of the RO.
NOTE: It appears you may still be well within your first five years since landing. If you have a valid PR card, the situation is fairly straight-forward: the sooner you actually come to Canada to stay, the better chance you have of keeping PR status. Nonetheless, if you are already in breach of the RO, there is NO way to confirm you will be allowed to keep PR status. Forecasting odds is a guessing game but, in general, for a new PR it appears there is a good chance a small breach of the RO will not trigger action to terminate PR status . . . NO guarantee, but it is easy to guess that the odds of it going OK are far better for the PR getting to Canada four months late than for the PR getting to Canada more than a year late.
Also note: if you have not yet been outside Canada for more than 1095 days since landing, you are not yet in breach of the RO. If so, and you can get to Canada before actually being in breach, in that event you can be confident you will be able to keep PR status (as long as you stay in Canada long enough to stay in compliance with the RO).
I feel Canada should relax the RO if someone has been trying sincerely for a job while living in Canada and not getting one and are forced to go back to their home country as they can't sustain on a minimum wage job.
I think they should also relax the RO for Covid, this needs no explanation. They've made this 2000 CAD quarantine obligation which is already a punishment for new immigrants for no fault of theirs but that's a separate topic.
They should cut some slack for new immigrants seriously. I think they should have this RO for people who don't come to Canada at all after receiving their PR. The RO unfairly penalizes immigrants who are trying to settle down in Canada and are forced to move back to their home countries as they're unable to find jobs. What else are they supposed to do? Starve? Be homeless in the freezing cold? Is that even an option?
tldr; Just remove the damn RO already!
RO won't be removed. It may be relaxed, but completely unrealistic to expect it to be removed.
If someone wants the privilege of no RO, they need to become a Canadian citizen. Canadian citizenship comes with the privilege of being able to live outside of Canada indefinitely. PR does not.
There is no specific relaxation of the RO for covid.
What does seem to need explanation, or at least reiteration, is what @dpenabill laid out above:
"Determinations about H&C relief will almost certainly take into consideration the impact of Covid-19, to the extent it explains why a PR remained outside Canada leading to a breach of the RO."
In fact, I think this statement can be strengthened (in the sense of what the regs and the legal framework says), in that H&C factors such as the impact of covid-19 must be taken into consideration.
That does not mean any individual case will be decided in favour of the PR, but it must be taken into consideration.
Or put slightly differently: effectively the IRCC position on this is that the legal/regulatory framework around RO obligations and humanitarian and compassionate relief already provides for 'relaxation' (of sorts).
Yes, this may not be in the form that many would seemingly prefer - specific relief - but it's still there.
This is really the key point that needs to be retained: there's no specific policy because there's a general policy that already covers this. And a process around it (such as appeals) that is not directly under government control.
We could engage in endless debate about whether they should or not provide some specific relief on RO. I think there is a very good reason to not provide specific language, particularly at this time (eg before the pandemic is 'over'). Amongst other reasons, such language might actually prove to be a constraint on H&C treatment / consideration that may not be sustainable/defensible. This might ultimately cause even more problems for government - if such 'relaxation policies' were later found to have discouraged PRs from returning (and therefore be grounds for endless legal challenges). [This basically is another example that 'governing is actually really hard' and simple, appealing answers can cause more problems later.]
Also, it might be a lot harder to write into guidelines than it seems at first glance, esp without causing more issues (such as inadvertently encouraging PRs to not return, depart for lengthy periods, or even travel more.)
I see it as possible that the government could issue some more-specific guideline at some point, 'after' the pandemic - but the policy argument for such a guideline would likely be first and foremost to reduce the administrative/legal burden and to simplify things for the government itself, and basically reflect actual practice / experience at borders and IAD hearings. In other words, it really wouldn't be a relaxation so much as an instruction/guideline for simplification purposes.
[As for removing the RO entirely - not engaging on that, does not seem a constructive discussion.]
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Allow me to indulge you, scylla.
Let me first say that I said to remove the RO out of frustration. I can understand why the RO is there but the issue is that it is out of sync with the ground realities in Canada that immigrants have to face.
The most common use case is of immigrants who quit their jobs in their home countries and come to Canada with the hope that they can enjoy a better quality of life only to find that they can't get a job in their field with a decent salary of say 70-80K. So, inorder to survive they take on some crappy minimum wage job that is meant for out of college grads and that has no relevance to their field of work and try and hope that they can get a job in their field. They try for about 3-6 months and after that they return when they cant find one. This was in normal market conditions, in pandemic times it's probably worse.
So the RO should be to reside in Canada for 6 months in say a time period of 1-3 years so that immigrants can try getting a job and if they can't atleast they don't permanently lose their PR. Perhaps they can come back at a later time in their lives when their situation improves. This will prevent people to simply take the PR and never actually live in Canada and also reward people who are trying their best to get a job in Canada.
The RO in it's current form is effectively saying 'Hey new guy if you can't get a job of your choice, prepare to break your back at a minimum wage job or kiss your PR goodbye'.
I also think citizenship should be decoupled from PR status because citizenship allows you voting rights and buying land, they're two separate entities but that's a topic for another time. As it stands the effective RO is actually 3 years plus a few months because remember 2 years is only to renew the PR, 2 years doesn't remove the RO.
An effective 3 year RO in a sluggish Canadian job market, one that doesn't recognize outside work experience, is absolutely brutal. Anyway that's my take on this.
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Your solution only benefits PRs. Based on your argument, people could technically return near retirement or children only return when they want to attend university and pay domestic tuition. Canada accepts immigrants because of labour market needs and to balance out our ageing population. Immigration is a choice. If people find that Canada is not for them and it would make more sense financially to remain in their home country they can just remain in their home country. Why would Canada leave the door open to return only when conditions are optimal for the PR? Would add that Canada accepts a certain number of PRs every year to try and have a steady stream of new immigrants. It would not make sense to allow a surge of PRs to move when Canada is at it’s peak economic growth or only when every PR has secured a comparable job to their home country. There are also many immigrants not making minimum wage. Canada has very lenient ROs to begin with compared to other countries. Not sure how much more lenient Canada can be while still being able to set immigration targets.
Buying land is available for anyone even foreigners.
Edit: Those unable to find jobs, could have go to school to upgrade their skills. What else are they supposed to do? Keep fit (skiing, marathoning)? In their motor home, vacationing from coast to coast. Is that even not an option?
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How did they even come up with this number of 2 out of 5 years or 3 years and a few months to get rid of the RO? Why isn't it 1 out of 2 years or 3 out of 6 years or some other random number? What does this actually address? If you don't know why this number was chosen then your argument is no better than mine. Understanding the RO number will address the root of their logic/reasoning.
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Going to school means taking on further debt without any guarantee of landing a field job and getting back on the minimum wage train. It's a genius system, keeps the economy going for sure.
Frankly, it appears you might not have a good grasp of Canada's immigration policies and practices. It's a huge, huge subject.
Your questions can be at least partially answered by doing some homework. At the least this should include reviewing Section 3 IRPA (see https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/I-2.5/page-1.html#h-274071 ) which details the Act's objectives, such as 3(1)(d) "to see that families are reunited in Canada" and 3(1)(e) "to promote the successful integration of permanent residents into Canada, while recognizing that integration involves mutual obligations for new immigrants and Canadian society."
A broader understanding of the Residency Obligation itself should be easily obtained by perusing a few topics here where H&C considerations in relation to Residency Obligation enforcement is discussed in some depth (there are scores of such topics here), or by perusing topics about the available credits toward RO compliance available to some PRs abroad (for example, topics where the accompanying-citizen-spouse-abroad credit, or the employed-abroad-by-Canadian-business-credit, are discussed in some depth). In particular, many of us, myself included, have addressed the underlying policies and rationales for them at length and in-depth in many of those discussions here.
Beyond that, reading at least some of the many official sources cited in those discussions, many linked, will help to get a more complete understanding. There are, additionally, other government sources which enable reviewing the legislative history of the legislation, though navigating back to 2001 when the 2/5 RO rule was adopted does take a bit of work. A significant amount of relevant information can be found in older editions of the Canada Gazette https://canadagazette.gc.ca/rp-pr/publications-eng.html#wb-cont
I have found IAD and Federal Court decisions very helpful. These can be easily found and read at the CanLII Federal website site, here: https://www.canlii.org/en/ca/ It is easy to search these official accounts of actual cases to find decisions dealing with the enforcement of the Residency Obligation, including its interpretation and application in a wide variety of circumstances.
Attempting to summarize what underlies the policies and practices reflected in the interpretation and enforcement of the RO would likely be more confusing than helpful . . . other than to note its most basic elements: the underlying purpose is to facilitate permanent settlement in Canada, allowing immigrants sufficient flexibility to accommodate almost any contingency requiring the immigrant to spend an extended period of time abroad (up to three years in any five) which is, nonetheless, consistent with the purpose for granting PR.
My sense is that attempts to unravel the precise calculations underlying the two years in five obligation, itself, are not likely to be productive. After all, once the legislation is adopted and becomes the governing law, those details are largely irrelevant in the interpretation and application of the law. In contrast, it is patently clear that the 2/5 rule is intended to be very generous, allowing PRs extensive flexibility in making their move to live in Canada permanently, nonetheless allowing that actually moving to and establishing a life in Canada is not for everyone, not even for everyone who thinks they want to make the move and have passed the screening criteria qualifying them to do so.
By the way:
H&C consideration already allows officials leeway in the enforcement of the Residency Obligation. Rather than some across-the-board "relaxation" of the already, as it is, rather relaxed RO, it facilitates individual specific relief IF and WHEN the circumstances warrant. And it allows officials to deny H&C relief when and where that is warranted. In conjunction with how liberal the 2/5 rule is, that amounts to a rather "relaxed" approach to giving immigrants a lot of options and personal choice in managing the logistics of their move to settle permanently in Canada, and in particular allows immigrants to spend extended periods of time (up to THREE YEARS) outside Canada if needed (need as judged by the PR, not some total-stranger bureaucrat), which is deemed enough to accommodate almost any extenuating circumstances for an immigrant who is (1) intent on settling in Canada permanently, and (2) is capable of doing so.
The latter is a part of the system. Canada has a rather generous immigration policy, especially relative to family unification, but it is not wide open. Immigrating to Canada is not for everyone. And yes, indeed, it can be a hard. It can be impossible for some. Worker-based immigration policies in particular make an effort to screen prospective immigrants in regards to ability to make the move to Canada. But it also relies on the individual to make judicious choices about what will work, what can work for them individually, depending not only on their skills but their financial resources as well. More than a few try and fail. More than a few try and learn Canada is not a good fit for them.
And for sure, there are all sorts of contingencies writ large into the process. Stuff-happens. A lot falls outside the scope of any guarantees at all. And that is in large part why Canada's PR program allows PRs to spend up to THREE YEARS abroad, virtually no questions asked, to give immigrants sufficient leeway and flexibility to deal with all sorts of hurdles they may personally face in making the move to Canada . . . recognizing, again, the system is not intended to accommodate everyone.
Beyond that, what-the-law-should-be is a huge subject, and largely an academic rather than a practical one.
Lot of experienced folks are complaining about not getting jobs in their field and it's not just niche fields it's also fields like IT which produces a lot of jobs, it's not just inexperienced guys who are having trouble so when you couple that with this 3 year RO elimination requirement it's basically an uphill battle.
Yes it's patently clear that they've made getting the PR the easy part in order to suck people in to fuel their economy and maintaining the PR is the actual hurdle, whereas in a country like say the US it's the opposite. Either way both immigration systems are broken and both need fixing.
In reality once people get jobs in their field in Canada, they don't quit the country only to come back to fulfill the RO unless there are some extenuating circumstances. They stay for as long as they hold on to the job. So while that 2/5 or 3 year elimination requirement to get rid of the RO as I said before and it bears repeating only looks good on PAPER and makes no difference for people who have landed in Canada and trying to get jobs and settle down. It's not just a few falling through the cracks, majority are struggling for jobs in Canada and it's significantly worse in the pandemic.
Maybe they made this RO to prevent people from gaming the system but what they've ended up doing is screwing the people who are making a sincere effort to play by the rules.
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I think I mentioned it appears you might not have a good grasp of Canada's immigration policies and practices. This seems even more apparent now.
At the least you are conflating a wide range of social and economic challenges, fueled by a lot of factors other than immigration practices, with what influences government decision-making in regards to adopting and implementing its immigration policies.
The fact that these social and economic challenges have an impact on immigrants, and to a significant extent probably an elevated impact on certain immigrants, does not mean the current system is "broken" in Canada (I do not know, and frankly do not care about the U.S., which to my view is an unfriendly, undesirable place to live).
Characterizing Canada's immigration system as designed to "suck" people into immigrating is at best hyperbolic, if not grossly unfair. As market incentives and advertising go, the Canadian immigration programs are neither a hard sell nor misleading. (In contrast, this forum is rife with perspectives rooted in reading what favours what one wants, overlooking the downsides otherwise there in plain sight.)
As I outlined above, the system has incorporated a lot of cushion, one might say, in an effort to address and accommodate the real-world challenges people generally, and immigrants in particular, too often encounter. (I am speculating a bit, but it is my strong impression that among Canadians, including those who came here as immigrants, the general sense is the system is too generous, too lenient.)
Complaints it does not work for some does not offer a better approach. Partial, spot-fixes, are especially unhelpful as they invariably create more problems than they solve.
And for now, and for awhile to come given what will certainly be the fairly long-term impact from the global pandemic, this is not the time to start from scratch.
The 2/5 years is good for people who want to take their own time to enter and settle down in Canada after they've landed and picked up their PR cards so this cushion only addresses a part of the issue which is minor compared to the following -
The real challenge starts when you actually land in Canada and try to get a job, settle down, buy a house etc. This is what Canada wants(atleast I hope that's the intention) and this is what the immigrants want too. At this point the 2/5 years or 3 year elimination for the RO becomes a burden when you can't get a field job. By the time you're in your 5th or 6th month, your savings are running empty and you have no recourse other than either returning to your home country or suffering in a minimum wage job which doesn't add any special skills to your resume and employers in your fields don't recognize, infact they may even see this as a negative depending on how long you've been stuck in a minimum wage job.
It's unfortunate that Canada thinks that doing minimum wage jobs for experienced people, some with over 10 years of work experience in unregulated professions and their experience isn't recognised because it's outside Canada, is normal and acceptable.
The whole point of coming to Canada for immigrants specially experienced professionals from developing countries is that they can better their quality of life that a developed country like Canada can offer and most PR holders are experienced professionals so expecting them to take minimum wage jobs because they can't obtain a field job just to meet the RO defeats their original purpose.
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IndianBos
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Canada doesnt expect everyone to take minimum wage jobs, the country offers a path to a better life (as you stated) by offering Permanent Residency based on your skills. And again, being very flexible with Residency Obligations, 2 out of 5 years is very lenient by any standards.
Regarding being able to find a job, it doesnt come as a given with the PR card (unless you get it through the job offer route), so everyone has to find their own way to get a job. And settling down in a new country, getting a footing in the job market, etc., is an uphill battle for sure. However, there are millions of immigrants who have been through this and the process/structure seems to be working, even if not perfect.