Wondering if we have a single thread where people can share their immigration experience at the border in case they have not met their RO , or enter Canada via US on their expired PR card. So starting one.
Fellow Travellers,
Please share the information below about your experience :-
PR card issue month / how many days you were short on your PR when you travelled.
Date of Travel
Travelling by land or air
Experience - Give details of your experience like Were you stopped by the Immigration Officer ? If yes , then what questions were asked and how did you handle it, what papers u were asked to show etc etc
Above info could help all potential travelers in terms of getting visibility and be more prepared. Obviously, each case is different. Thanks!
The information you ask for is here, spread out in many posts in many topics, scores and scores of posts over time. And yeah, it is useful but nonetheless making inferences based on it should be approached with much caution.
Some Contextual Observations:
I agree that a collection of such information could be useful, if approached employing critical analytical reasoning recognizing there are severe limitations and that drawing conclusions based on anecdotal reporting is rife with pitfalls. Even when considered in context with other sources, knowing what the rules actually are and understanding what is available to the public in regards to the practices employed by officials, extracting useful information from "
this happened to me . . . " accounts is a lot more tricky than many of the discussions in forums like this reflect.
One key danger is the tendency to make inferences that what happened to this or that person means that will happen to another, or something very similar will happen, when this can be way, way off even if one is talking about cases which appear to be quite similar. Especially in regards to Port-of-Entry experiences. Anyone who follows the anecdotal reporting, let alone those who follow published decisions recounting actual cases, should easily be well aware how widely varying outcomes can be, even in what seem to be quite similar situations.
The details matter. And they are what makes the difference. So I disagree with
@canuck78 that what happens is "
extremely dependent on luck," unless that is just about recognizing that many of the factors which will influence how things go are not readily catalogued or identified, and thus the reference to "
luck" is more or less an acknowledgement that it is near impossible to reliably predict what will actually happen for any particular PR arriving at a PoE when in breach of the RO, or without a valid PR card, or both.
Which brings this to why I am offering my observations here: Actually a lot of what you ask for is already posted in this forum. It is clear that I am not the only forum participant, that I am but one among several if not many, who follow the fairly steady flow of anecdotal reports here from PRs relating their PoE experiences when arriving in Canada, including many whose PR card has expired, many who are in breach of the RO, and many for whom it is both. There are, literally, scores of topics here oriented to these scenarios, populated by scores and scores of anecdotal reports.
It would be wonderful if someone had the time and patience to invest in the effort of collecting and organizing this information in a structured format. However, that information would still have the limitations I referenced, and drawing inferences from it would still be tricky and rife with pitfalls. However, it very well should help identify some patterns related to key factors.
Of course those of us who have been following the anecdotal reporting over a period of time (most of whom do so also paying attention to other sources of related information, especially as to what the rules and practices are) have identified some patterns, some of which supports what might be called the "
conventional wisdom."
Key example of conventional wisdom here: the bigger the breach of the RO, the bigger the risk of RO compliance questioning at the PoE, and the bigger the risk of RO enforcement proceedings. Of course there is a corollary to that: the sooner the PR in breach returns to Canada, the better their odds of (1) being waived through at the PoE without probing questions about RO compliance, but (2) even if subject to RO compliance questioning, the better their odds of not being subject to an inadmissibility Report let alone being issued a Departure or Removal Order.
Among key elements which warrants noting here is that PRs in breach should be aware that being in breach means they are at risk for RO enforcement. For some the risk may be fairly low (like a soft-landed PR who misses getting to Canada to stay by just a week or month shy of being in RO compliance),
but to be in breach is to be at risk. Thus, such PRs should be prepared to explain their situation and reasons for not getting to Canada sooner, to in effect make the H&C case why they should be allowed to keep PR status despite the breach of the RO.
In contrast, PRs who are well settled in Canada and solidly in compliance with the RO, who just happen to be abroad without a valid PR card, have rather little to worry about in regards to how it is likely to go at the PoE (assuming they are returning to Canada via the U.S. border). And they should not have much to worry about in terms of obtaining a PR TD to board a flight back to Canada, but be prepared to submit some supporting documents (showing RO compliance) with the PR TD application and cognizant that processing timelines for a PR TD can pose a major inconvenience.
In any event . . . there is actually a lot of the information you solicit populating this part of the forum, scattered about in scores and scores of threads here. While topic titles offer a clue as to which discussions contain such reporting, a lot of it also shows up in other topics, such as the timeline topics. So, yeah, it would be a huge effort to wade through the forum selecting, compiling, collating, and organizing this information. Could be quite useful if someone does this.
