Hi everybody so I am Canadian and I am currently trapped in the Phillipines (that's another story) with my girlfriend who is from Italy. We have been together for 1 year and 3 months and have been travelling together in Australia and the Phillipines for the past 5 months. I know the travel ban for Canada exempts immediate family members but my girlfriend had to go to Italy to be with her family and work for 4 months in 2019. We have lived together for the rest of our relationship. So it seems she would not qualify for common law considering 4 months apart would be too long. I'm just curious if she has any other options to come with me to Canada because if I leave to Canada by myself she will be trapped here by herself. It will be very difficult for her to get to Italy for a while with all of the travel bans and I fear for her safety.
Trapped in the Phillipines, anyway to get my girlfriend to Canada ?
- Thread starter Nittin969
- Start date
You are correct. The four month break means you won't be classified as common law. Right now there are no provisions for her to travel to Canada and the ban applies to her since she is technically classified as a visitor with no immediate Canadian relative.
One option would be to get married.
The other option would be to attempt to board a flight to Canada together and show evidence that you live together. Hard to know if this will work and it's possible the airline may not allow her to travel to Canada.
Thanks for your input. We did consider the option to get married however we are stuck on an island and with the current quarentine in the Phillipines we only have the opportunity to travel straight to an airport and not anywhere else. As far as I know before we can get married in the Phillipines I have to arrive in person to an embassy and get a certificate before we can even try. So at the moment that is not possible until the community quarentine has ended.
In that case your only option would be to try to have both of you board a plane to Canada with evidence that you live together. You will want to show things like joint leases, joint utilities, joint bank accounts if possible. But again, keep in mind that you don't actually meet the requirements for common law and the travel ban does in fact apply to her so quite possible she may be denied boarding. Other option is of course to stay put.
I am currently in the PH. Are aware that there have been what they are calling "sweeper" flights from many parts of the PH to get foreigners to MNL to catch international flights out of the country? Where are you located now? For the most part I believe they ended a few days ago but still seeing the odd one, monitor CDN embassy on FB, Twitter or their official site for the PH. If you want to get out of the country get in touch with Dept of Tourism where you are located. They are the ones co-ordinating the flights and have been doing a great job.
If you want to get out that is the way to do it. As for your main issue of getting her to Canada I can't comment on that. So either go to MNL to get a flight out if you want to split up and go different directions if needed or hunker down and wait it out. CDN embassy here has been very helpful and prompt in replying to questions. Contact them directly, they should be able to tell you if she is admissable under the current restrictions.
If you want to get out that is the way to do it. As for your main issue of getting her to Canada I can't comment on that. So either go to MNL to get a flight out if you want to split up and go different directions if needed or hunker down and wait it out. CDN embassy here has been very helpful and prompt in replying to questions. Contact them directly, they should be able to tell you if she is admissable under the current restrictions.
The issue is that she doesn’t qualify. They would have to attempt to get on a flight together and see if they get lucky. That would also mean that the gf could get stuck in Manila.
Part of the issue is if she qualifies, as only immediate family members of Citizens and PR's will be allowed into the country, so the Q is if they recognize their relationship as her being an immediate family member. As mentioned above they would not qualify as common law as mentioned by @ canuck in the UK. So will that allow her to go to Canada I think is the issue. You would have to prove that before they will let you on a flight to Canada, not sure how they would do that when half way around the world.
Technically they need to have lived together for 1 continuous year and be able to prove it. With her time in a Italy it seems like they don’t qualify for common law. Some may try and show the evidence they have to the airline, sometimes people get lucky. If you live in Manila getting to the airport and trying is not a big deal but if you fly to Manila and get rejected getting back to your home may be very difficult and so that needs to be considered. The cost of the flight and whether you will get a refund if you are denied boarding is another issue that needs to be factored in.
I think we are both on the same page now. Getting to MNL and being denied boarding is not fun, I can attest to that first hand because we are in that position right now. One week ago we managed to get to MNL only to have PH Immigration tell my wife and son they couldn't leave the country, there is a ban on PH citizens leaving the country if on a tourist visa. We have a PR application in process and were going to enter under dual intent.
But the part of the experience that more applicable in this situation is convincing the airline when you check in that you are qualified to enter. The agent insisted that we couldn't, I knew they could as far as Canada is concerned. They got the CDN embassy on the phone. We had our marriage certificate and my son's Birth certificate to show them, The embassy confirmed they could enter.
Lacking some kind of document saying they are common law is the problem and I am not aware that any official government exists? If they want to stay together I suggest they stay where they are and not try right now.
We are stuck in MNL until PH immigration relaxes the rules for us to go to Canada or they resume domestic flight here for us to go back to our home here. We were flying with ANA who promptly refunded our ticket with 1 phone call. Other airlines might not be so easy to deal with for a refund.
Thanks for all of the info everybody. I would like to take the risk of just trying and see what happens but I don't want to get denied boarding so we will probably not go that route. Unless we had some kind of solid confirmation. I can not seem to get ahold of the embassy, can you suggest the best method of communicating with them?
I could just come by myself as a Canadian and meet with my girlfriend later however there are literally no available flights for her take back to her country so I would be abandoning her for who knows how long.
Another issue is we are on Romblon Island and can not organize to get to the airport in any way. Even after talking with the DOT. They said any drivers that could take us to the airport are in quarentine.
Canada2020eh, can I ask you if ANA instantly refunded your money? We already lost 3 flights and only have credit we can't use. I can't afford to wait for a refund.
Proving common law is harder than proving marriage and that you are a child’s parent.
Just spoke to them yesterday to do the refund, they said it should be processed within a week. If you can't get to MNL then the rest of it is a moot point. When we heard about the sweeper flight I was scrambling like crazy to arrange a flight out. Very few seats out there, I won't tell you how much I spent on the Business Class tickets.
Another thing to consider is that if you do get to MNL and can't get a flight out the hotel prices are pretty high. Very few open, we were at the Airport Hilton for 4 nights @ $170 a night. And that was the special rate they were offering during the crisis!!
Sorry to hijack the thread but I am in a very similar situation and have a few questions:
Is your son also a Canadian citizen? Would Philippines immigration have let him go with you alone?
Did you apply for the PR docs before all this mess started? What is the process like?
Thanks
No problem, no he isn't a Canadian citizen yet. If he was then I would still need an authorization letter from his Mother for him to travel with me alone. Same thing that's required for 1 parent to travel anywhere by air.
Our application was filed in December 2019. Process is fine, you can do the application yourself. Just have to be very thorough in your preparations for completing the forms. Then a lot of patience as your app goes through the system. This forum is the best resource out there to help you with questions you might have during the process. There are no immigration experts here, just a lot of people who want to help others. Look around the forum more to get an idea of how it works.
Go here to get the forms that are needed, some forms are country specific, make sure you get the right ones.
https://www.canada.ca/en/immigration-refugees-citizenship/services/application.html