My fiancé and I applied for conjugal sponsorship while she was in Jamaica in January. We received our Aor and then applied for a visitor visa which was approved and she is now in canada with me. I want to know if this will affect the application status if she remain here and apply for a work permit.
Conjugal partners
- Thread starter Peta876
- Start date
Withdraw the conjugal application. You're not going to meet the requirements to be approved.
Wait until you get married and then submit a new sponsorship application as a married couple.
The application is pending currently and your saying i should cancel even though its almost 1 year and i received the AOR?
AOR does not indicate an approval of any sort. It just means that IRCC has assessed your application as complete (i.e. no missing forms).
What were your grounds for applying under conjugal? What were the immigration barriers you demonstrated that made it impossible for you to get married or become common law?
Had she already applied for a TRV previously and that TRV was refused before you submitted the conjugal application?
Did you explore getting married in a 3rd country like Mexico?
So the challenge with the original application you submitted is that it does not present a strong case for conjugal based on the information you've provided. You didn't apply for a TRV ahead of submitting the conjugal application to try to bring your partner over here to get married. Generally speaking, at an absolute minimum, IRCC expects you to do this to demonstrate a real immigration barrier to gettting married.
You could get super lucky and have the officer approve the application. However I do think you should be prepared for the possibility IRCC will challenge that you don't meet the requirements of the conjugal class. I would order your GCMS notes now to see what is happening with your application. If there are any officer notes there indicating IRCC is challenging if you meet the conjugal class requirements, I would withdraw the applicaion (rather than wasting more time waiting), get married, and then submit a new application.
I largely agree with @scylla's points above, but would suggest getting married ASAP, submit evidence of the marriage (the thing you get at the ceremony) and copy of the wedding certificate as soon as you receive it. Include a letter of explanation in that first submission that you have gotten married (and the wedding certificate will be provided as soon as available). Letter of explanation should clarify that you applied as conjugal b/c of Jamaican law, and you got married as soon as your spouse arrived. I would have no hesitation in specifying that b/c of Jamaican attitudes and laws about same-sex marriage and that your partner didn't have a visa, you applied on conjugal basis.
There are other variations on this. But the core of your submissions and actions should be on the hope that IRCC officer will evaluation your application as married EVEN THOUGH the process does not actually provide a mechanism to 'convert' an app from conjugal to married.
It is my belief and intuition that IRCC has no interest in refusing a conjugal application IF [and only if] the couple has subsequently found a way to get married. But I cannot prove this; in this scenario, you are counting on leniency and a form of mercy on the part of the examining officer.
And I do actually concur with @scylla that you may still get refusal, as - when you applied for conjugal - you were (arguably) not qualified to do so.*
Note: yes, I am proposing a version of this where you do not withdraw your existing application - at least not right away. Apply and hope. You still should get your GCMS notes, and perhaps 4-6 weeks after submitting webform, you could inquire through your MP as well. But you may still get refusal, or - just as bad in my opinion - face a long, long wait that could well be longer than a new application on inland basis. GCMS notes might provide some clue, but might not.
While waiting for the marriage certificate, I'd suggest preparing everything for a new, de novo application. Hopefully it won't be needed, but if you decide to do so, you'll have it ready. No point doing this before the marriage certificate is received.
I've no opinion on the work permit question. And if you're not willing to get married ASAP, well, good luck, but my advice here is based on going to city hall and getting the marriage done ASAP.
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* I am splitting out here separately my comment on 'arguably' not qualified for conjugal.
@scylla and others and myself genuinely and sincerely counsel anyone applying under conjugal that there are basically two significant criteria to qualify as conjugal: a legal barrier to getting married and/or becoming common law (eg same sex marriage not recognized, divorce not legal, etc), AND an immigration barrier (i.e. one partner cannot get a visa to Canada in order to get married / become common law here.
[Side note: another requirement is that the conjugal relationship must be more than 12 months old and the partners to have met in person. As far as I'm aware these two requirements are absolute musts.]
As I said, this is the correct and best counsel to potential applicants. Applications DO get returned for not showing the 'immigration barrier.'
But as far as I can tell, this is NOT applied 100% consistently, and it is my belief that the instructions in this regard are not as perfectly clear as they should be on this point. (IRCC internal manuals do seem to make it clear, but IRCC internal manuals are not 'law' but guidelines.) The relevant law does not specify conjugal at all, really, except to say that this will be defined in the regulations. And as far as I can tell the regulations do not go into this level of specificity, i.e. do not state that both of these tests must be met. (Happy to be corrected - regs are here - https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/regulations/SOR-2002-227/page-1.html?txthl=conjugal#s-1 )
At any rate, I repeat: anyone who is preparing to apply SHOULD try to meet both of these tests. But it's not so clear to me that the regs REQUIRE such an app to be refused if only one of them is met. (In contrast, I believe the law and regs require an app to be refused if the conjugal partners have been together less than 12 months and have not met in person).
The existence of the (more detailed) manuals suggest such an app is LIKELY to be refused, but likely is not the same as certainty. The (very infrequent) evidence of periodic approvals for those not meeting the second test provides weak support to my thesis.
For the OP in this thread, @Peta876 , it leaves some uncertainty, and means I cannot say which approach is better (and I don't think anyone can say for sure). "Better" also depends, since part of the recommendations made above is a guess on which process would be quicker (in this case, if refused, the OP and partner can just get married and re-apply, a refusal would be without prejudice to a new family class application after getting married).
[Side note: there are some here who believe the sponsor must ALSO demonstrate that they can't leave Canada to reside abroad for a year in order to become common law - my opinion is that this is utterly wrong and patently absurd. I won't address this here. It might - conceivably - come up in cases where sponsor and partner factually DID live abroad, possibly together, and for periods long enough to have become common law (from IRCC perspective) and 'chose' not to. That's a different point, again, I won't address it here.]
@scylla and others and myself genuinely and sincerely counsel anyone applying under conjugal that there are basically two significant criteria to qualify as conjugal: a legal barrier to getting married and/or becoming common law (eg same sex marriage not recognized, divorce not legal, etc), AND an immigration barrier (i.e. one partner cannot get a visa to Canada in order to get married / become common law here.
[Side note: another requirement is that the conjugal relationship must be more than 12 months old and the partners to have met in person. As far as I'm aware these two requirements are absolute musts.]
As I said, this is the correct and best counsel to potential applicants. Applications DO get returned for not showing the 'immigration barrier.'
But as far as I can tell, this is NOT applied 100% consistently, and it is my belief that the instructions in this regard are not as perfectly clear as they should be on this point. (IRCC internal manuals do seem to make it clear, but IRCC internal manuals are not 'law' but guidelines.) The relevant law does not specify conjugal at all, really, except to say that this will be defined in the regulations. And as far as I can tell the regulations do not go into this level of specificity, i.e. do not state that both of these tests must be met. (Happy to be corrected - regs are here - https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/regulations/SOR-2002-227/page-1.html?txthl=conjugal#s-1 )
At any rate, I repeat: anyone who is preparing to apply SHOULD try to meet both of these tests. But it's not so clear to me that the regs REQUIRE such an app to be refused if only one of them is met. (In contrast, I believe the law and regs require an app to be refused if the conjugal partners have been together less than 12 months and have not met in person).
The existence of the (more detailed) manuals suggest such an app is LIKELY to be refused, but likely is not the same as certainty. The (very infrequent) evidence of periodic approvals for those not meeting the second test provides weak support to my thesis.
For the OP in this thread, @Peta876 , it leaves some uncertainty, and means I cannot say which approach is better (and I don't think anyone can say for sure). "Better" also depends, since part of the recommendations made above is a guess on which process would be quicker (in this case, if refused, the OP and partner can just get married and re-apply, a refusal would be without prejudice to a new family class application after getting married).
[Side note: there are some here who believe the sponsor must ALSO demonstrate that they can't leave Canada to reside abroad for a year in order to become common law - my opinion is that this is utterly wrong and patently absurd. I won't address this here. It might - conceivably - come up in cases where sponsor and partner factually DID live abroad, possibly together, and for periods long enough to have become common law (from IRCC perspective) and 'chose' not to. That's a different point, again, I won't address it here.]
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Thanks for such useful information. I wonder for OP's case, if they meet the requirements of conjugal when she did apply, they still could be approved even her partner is currently in Canada now? The decision should be made on the condition when you applied right? As I can see IRCC web clearly says open work permit is available for spouse, common-law and conjugal partner if they are reside in Canada now. This kind of tells me that the conjugal partner could be in Canada after the submission of the application. What's your thoughts?
It certainly might still work out for them. IMO the main concern is that they didn't even try to apply for a TRV before submitting the conjugal application. That is normally the bare minimum IRCC would expect you to do before you submit a conjugal application. If a TRV is approved, then very easy for the partner to come to Canada to get married here or become common law. If the couple hasn't even attempted the TRV, hard to show there's a real immigration barrier at the time they applied.
Just to add, IMO your situation is very different since you did in fact attempt to get a TRV and they were refused. OP did not attempt a TRV before submitting the conjugal application. That makes this situation quite different than yours.
Yea I understand this part. I am just wondering the decision should be made based on the condition when they submitted the application or whenever.
For example, someone met the conjugal requirements, (had refused TRV, can't get married...etc). But after submitting, she got her trv approved(first time refused before submitting, second time approved after submitting) ，would this destroy the original conjugal application?