Can you clear this part up? Here is our situation.
We met and dated since 1999. I was a PR before I met her at university.
We moved together to the UK in 2008 and have proof of living together etc. We married in the UK in May 2013.
There is little known about the risk a visa office might consider
who-accompanied-who. Generally, it is
not an issue, not taken into consideration.
cempjwi's caution, however, is warranted in
some situations. Difficulty is in discerning which situations, discerning who might actually have some risk in this regard.
The risk in your situation is that using a marriage certificate as proof of your relationship may very well make the wrong impression, suggesting
you, the PR, were living abroad before the beginning of the relationship.
While how much risk is difficult and perhaps impossible to forecast, perhaps submitting proof of cohabitation sufficient to show a common-law relationship prior to the marriage, perhaps prior to the move to the UK as well, together with a brief explanation, would minimize or eliminate the risk. Given how long it has been, a letter from your spouse affirming cohabitation since xx date and identifying address history (addresses at which you have resided together), should suffice (it is not likely the visa office is going to go looking for reasons justifying termination your PR status in your situation). That is, in addition to submitting the marriage certificate, also submit explanation and some proof of being common-law prior to marriage, per what the actual facts were of course.
There are alternative options even if this runs into problems (including ultimately losing PR and being a visa-exempt visitor unless and until a move to Canada is planned, and then being sponsored for spouse-sponsored PR). Indeed, there is the option of avoiding a PR TD application by traveling via the U.S., and especially if you are traveling together you might want to consider this, traveling by air to the U.S. and using ground transportation from a city near the Canadian border to travel to Canada. Odds of a problem at the PoE are low if you are together, and explain you are married and living together in the UK (going into more detail
IF questioned further, but that seems unlikely).
Given this background, I am not sure it would be a good idea to affirmatively request a multiple-use PR TD. A straight-forward PR TD application, with proof of marriage and some documentation of common-law status prior to marriage, seems less likely to invite a focus on the question about whether you were living abroad prior to being in a spousal relationship. There have been reports that PRs living abroad with Canadian citizen spouse have been issued a multiple-use, multiple-year PR TD without specifically requesting this. There have also been reports that PRs in this situation have been issued only a single-use PR TD despite request for multiple-use PR TD.
Technically you should have
NO problem. And, indeed, if your relationship was common-law beginning before the move to the UK, almost for sure no problem (of course the PR needs to submit proof of the relationship, proof of spouse's Canadian citizenship, and spouse's address history showing living together). If your relationship was a marriage that began prior to the move to the UK, no problem. It is the
impression the marriage date might make which invites some pause.
