whiteapple said:
Hi!
I currently have a post graduation work permit and I found out that my employer has to sponsor me so I can extend my work permit. However, knowing my employer, she won't. My boyfriend and I decided to get married next month instead...
1. Can I stay and continue working here even if my temporary resident visa and work permit will be expiring on October?
2. I currently work as an education system which classified as a Level C occupation. Is it possible for me to extend my work permit then?
3. How long is the process for sponsorship?
please help!
thanks!
Once you are married you are eligible to be sponsored for permanent residence. Since you want to be able to continue working under your current work permit, you need to apply for permanent residence through the
inland spousal process AND you
must include an
application to extend your status/work permit WITH the inland PR application (and pay the additional $150 fee). The whole package MUST BE
RECEIVED BY CPC-VEGREVILLE
before your current work permit expires or you will not have the "implied status" you need to be able to continue working. That means you have to have the fees paid, the application forms done, the medical exam accomplished and your criminal clearances at least ordered - if not received. You can get those things in motion before you get married (I'd suggest you do that) so that as soon as you have a copy of your Record of Solemnization from your legal marriage to include with the application, you can submit it. Send it by courier so that you can get delivery confirmation AND keep photocopies of EVERY document and form you submit. These will be your proof that you have implied status to continue working. Remember, in order for this to work, the whole application packet AND the extension application have to be received by CPC-V before your current status expires - and you cannot apply to extend the work permit without the inland spousal component!! It would be refused without your employer's sponsorship.
You won't hear anything for the first 6-7 months after the application is received - it takes them that long to get to your application to begin to assess it. Once they do, you'll be assessed for the first stage and, if you're approved, they'll issue you a new "open" work permit that will allow you to work for anybody. That will be your new temporary status document and you'll need to keep that current by applying to extend it if it's due to expire again before you have PR. The rest of the PR process will take from 6-12 months . . . so you're looking at 12-18 months overall. You can apply outland, which will probably process faster, but you won't be able to continue to work. You would, in that case, need to submit the same extension application that you'd submit with the inland ap, but separately from the PR application - directly to Vegreville - and you'd have to apply to change your conditions to "visitor". You can be approved to extend based on your legal marriage, and that will give you implied status to remain in Canada, as a visitor, until you get a response (in about 100 days) - and then you'd be able to remain in Canada while your outland PR ap was processing. Ultimately you'd have PR sooner, but you wouldn't be working again until after PR was finalized.
How long it would take to process your outland PR ap depends on which country you're from/which overseas embassy processes it.
Also, obviously you can continue to work until October - so if you got married now and submitted your PR application outland, you could be very close to being approved for PR before your work permit even expires. It would just depend on which embassy is processing your ap (again, depending on your country of nationality) and how straight-forward your application is.
