Work Permit about to expire - Spouse Immigration about to be file

[Mrludovic]

Hi People in the Forum,

My study permit is about to expire on July 31. I'm preparing to send out my spouse immigration files, and they are expected to go out before the end of July. At the same time, I also applied for an Open Work Permit.

I'm not currently in school.
Do I need to do something about my immigration status while waiting for my immigration files getting processed?
Can I just let my study permit expire and wait in Canada for my open work permit?
Or do I need to apply for a Visitor Record or something?

Also for Visitor Record, I've applied for it before when I was not in school for more than 5 months. I was told that I needed to change my study permit to a visitor record and then change back to a study permit. Now I'm not in school again, and it's been more than 5 months. I'm not sure if I can apply for a visitor record again.

Thank you in advance!

 

[k.h.p.]

How long have you not been in school? It's very possible that 90 days after you stopped attending classes, your school reported you for not being a student. If you have not been a student for 5 months, your status as a student ended some time ago and you would have had to changed status to visitor back then, when you stopped being a student.

As you're not a student, you're not in status, and you're not eligible for an OWP as part of a spousal application (a process that would take 7-8 months based on current numbers).

You should really be in status to avoid any concerns about being ordered to leave.

You could theoretically try to restore to a visitor, I suppose.

 

[scylla]

Hi People in the Forum,

My study permit is about to expire on July 31. I'm preparing to send out my spouse immigration files, and they are expected to go out before the end of July. At the same time, I also applied for an Open Work Permit.

I'm not currently in school.
Do I need to do something about my immigration status while waiting for my immigration files getting processed?
Can I just let my study permit expire and wait in Canada for my open work permit?
Or do I need to apply for a Visitor Record or something?

Also for Visitor Record, I've applied for it before when I was not in school for more than 5 months. I was told that I needed to change my study permit to a visitor record and then change back to a study permit. Now I'm not in school again, and it's been more than 5 months. I'm not sure if I can apply for a visitor record again.

Thank you in advance!

It's honestly really hard to say what your status is at this point. It's possible your study permit has been canceled since you stopped attending school (which would put you out of status in Canada) and also possible it's still valid.

Make sure you get the spousal sponsorship application submitted and received by IRCC before July 31.

Depending on how long ago you stopped attending school and when, it may also make sense to apply to restore your status. It may be too late to apply to change your status to visitor. Again, very hard to say.