Marry him, then initiate sponsorship
Q. My fiancé is from the U.S. and I want him to be able to live here. He is leaving next week and it breaks our hearts to see him go.
I’ve tried everything. But all I keep getting is let down. If he got his permanent residency he still wouldn’t be able to work for months and I’m told he would still have to wait for approval for 18 months. He can stay but if he cannot work that isn’t good.
If he finds a job he has to get a labour-market opinion, which means he will have to wait for months just to be able to work. And the business that wants to hire him has to fill out a lot of paperwork and it has to be a job a Canadian cannot do. Does this make any sense? Is there no way I can get around this? We wanted to get married this year. A. As a citizen of a foreign country your husband-to-be needs to go through immigration procedures before he can settle here. Those are simply the rules.
There was a time when it was very difficult for spousal sponsorships to be processed from within Canada. In those days, the wouldbe spouse in most cases had to leave Canada and await processing. Some years ago, the immigration department realized the strain this kind of separation can cause and changed the rules to allow an application for spousal sponsorship to be submitted and processed from within Canada. That was a progressive move.
What you would seem to be proposing is that officials go one step farther and waive the work-permit requirements for those who are married to a Canadian citizen. But I believe many others would argue that at a certain point the rules have to be applied.
My suggestion is this: If it is your intention to marry at a later date, why not get married now so that you can initiate the spousal sponsorship from within Canada? That way your fiancé could remain in Canada while you get the ball rolling to obtain a work permit. Q. My U.K. passport expires this month, so I went online to download a renewal form. What a surprise. I learned that all passports are now handled in Washington, not at the British High Commis-
British passports must be renewed in Washington
sion in Ottawa. The charges for a passport are around $250 (U.S.) and a fee of $33 for courier services. This is outrageous, as at least Canada and the U.K. are related but the U.K. has nothing to do with the U.S. I have applied for Canadian citizenship, which should be finalized within the next few months, and I was hoping to carry dual passports — but not at this outrageous charge. A. You are correct, British passport applications filed in North Amer- ica are now processed from a central unit located in Washington. This arrangement has been in place for some time and while you and many others may not like it, it is the system put in place by the British government for centralizing the processing of overseas passport applications. All I can suggest is that as a British national you voice your displeasure with the British High Commission. Correction: A response to a question published in a recent column was in error. The question was about the status of an American man married to a Canadian. Until 1994, they lived in Canada and he had permanent resident status. Since then, they’ve been living in the U.S. and coming back to Canada now and then. They intend to return permanently this fall. They wondered whether he would be deemed to have abandoned his permanent resident status in Canada given such a long absence. My response was that yes, he would almost certainly be deemed to have abandoned his status and would have to reapply. Several readers pointed out that there is an exemption in the rules for permanent residents who live outside of Canada for extended periods but who remain in the company of their Canadian-citizen spouse. Indeed, according to Article 28 of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act and Article 61(4) of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Regulations, a permanent resident may count the days spent outside of Canada as days for which they satisfy the residency obligation if they are accompanying a Canadian-citizen spouse or common-law partner outside Canada. The details can be found online at http://bit.ly/zaqprn .