Hello everyone,
I'd appreciate advice from anyone who may have suggestions on this.
I'm about to get married to the love of my life. A wonderful young lady who is literally the best thing to ever happen to me!
In a few days, we'll be getting married in Alberta. I'm in Canada on an open (post-graduation) work permit. She's Canadian and will be sponsoring me for spousal immigration. We would like to spend time visiting my home country together in the future, but her main family connections are in Canada and we both want to build our futures here. Although thrilled at how well our relationship is going, we're facing some stress and hurdles being together in the near future as a result of my immigration status.
My current status (post-graduation open work permit) expires in early January 2017.
We've already started completing documentation for the previous version of the spousal immigration sponsorship package, which changed to a new system today, so have until the end of January 2017 to gather our final documents and submit that using the old system.
Now the tricky part. With only two weeks from the date of the ceremony to the expiration of my work permit (and several days within that period being lost due to Christmas holiday closures), I think it will probably be impossible to get the actual official marriage certificate document before my existing status expires. As I understand it that leaves us with three options:
1) I return to my homeland and wait for the application to be completed from there. This is far from ideal for both of us. We don't want to be separated for the long duration of an outland application.
2) We could submit our application using the marriage licence, wedding photographs and other supporting evidence and a covering letter explaining that we've applied for the actual official wedding certificate and will forward it as soon as we have it available. I would apply for an open work permit at the same time. As I understand it I would then have the option to remain working on implied status while the application is being processed, but we'd be risking the possibility that the application would simply be rejected as incomplete and that I'd have to leave my wife. If that happened we'd then be in the same situation as scenario 1 above.
3) I could submit an application to change status to visitor. We would then wait for the marriage certificate to arrive and submit the complete application at that point, for both the spousal immigration and the open work permit. I am however confused as to whether or not I could remain working on implied status throughout this process? I'm uncertain whether the transition from work permit to visitor application submitted to applying for work permit would break the chain of continuity required to remain working on implied status from my existing work permit? This option seems to be the most secure in terms of meeting all the immigration requirements exactly as written, but my being unable to work for four months would be a bit of a disaster for us financially.
If anyone has any advice as to which route we should follow, please reply! I think scenario 2 is the best one, as I know I'd have implied status for work purposes in that situation. We're really worried though in case the officer simply rejects the application as incomplete and we end up being separated for a year and a half as a result! I've seen other threads saying it's common to submit applications missing the marriage certificate and simply forward this later, but we're worried this might end badly!
Thanks,
SunshineInAlberta
I'd appreciate advice from anyone who may have suggestions on this.
I'm about to get married to the love of my life. A wonderful young lady who is literally the best thing to ever happen to me!
In a few days, we'll be getting married in Alberta. I'm in Canada on an open (post-graduation) work permit. She's Canadian and will be sponsoring me for spousal immigration. We would like to spend time visiting my home country together in the future, but her main family connections are in Canada and we both want to build our futures here. Although thrilled at how well our relationship is going, we're facing some stress and hurdles being together in the near future as a result of my immigration status.
My current status (post-graduation open work permit) expires in early January 2017.
We've already started completing documentation for the previous version of the spousal immigration sponsorship package, which changed to a new system today, so have until the end of January 2017 to gather our final documents and submit that using the old system.
Now the tricky part. With only two weeks from the date of the ceremony to the expiration of my work permit (and several days within that period being lost due to Christmas holiday closures), I think it will probably be impossible to get the actual official marriage certificate document before my existing status expires. As I understand it that leaves us with three options:
1) I return to my homeland and wait for the application to be completed from there. This is far from ideal for both of us. We don't want to be separated for the long duration of an outland application.
2) We could submit our application using the marriage licence, wedding photographs and other supporting evidence and a covering letter explaining that we've applied for the actual official wedding certificate and will forward it as soon as we have it available. I would apply for an open work permit at the same time. As I understand it I would then have the option to remain working on implied status while the application is being processed, but we'd be risking the possibility that the application would simply be rejected as incomplete and that I'd have to leave my wife. If that happened we'd then be in the same situation as scenario 1 above.
3) I could submit an application to change status to visitor. We would then wait for the marriage certificate to arrive and submit the complete application at that point, for both the spousal immigration and the open work permit. I am however confused as to whether or not I could remain working on implied status throughout this process? I'm uncertain whether the transition from work permit to visitor application submitted to applying for work permit would break the chain of continuity required to remain working on implied status from my existing work permit? This option seems to be the most secure in terms of meeting all the immigration requirements exactly as written, but my being unable to work for four months would be a bit of a disaster for us financially.
If anyone has any advice as to which route we should follow, please reply! I think scenario 2 is the best one, as I know I'd have implied status for work purposes in that situation. We're really worried though in case the officer simply rejects the application as incomplete and we end up being separated for a year and a half as a result! I've seen other threads saying it's common to submit applications missing the marriage certificate and simply forward this later, but we're worried this might end badly!
Thanks,
SunshineInAlberta
