Applied for Common-Law, now need to extend my stay in Canada...

[iansaunders]

Hello,

I was wondering if anyone could help? Two months I handed in an in-Canada application for PR, which I am still awaiting confirmation that my common law has been approved to be sponsor. I am a British Citizen who is living with his common-law partner in Canada, though as of mid-October my six months is up and I will need to extend my stay if I wish to remain in Canada. I have a few questions regarding this:

1) Can I extend my stay (gain another six months) at the border with the US asi tis only a half hour drive away? I believe this is called "flagpoling"
2) If I were to extend my stay, would I be eligible to fly back to the UK, and return a couple of weeks later on the same visa? I'm just thinking ahead for christmas and I'm not sure if the visa suggested on the CIC website is muliple entry.

Many thanks in advance,

 

[rjessome]

As soon as you leave Canada, the visa has ended and a new one is issued once to return to Canada. The exception to this is if you apply to extend your Visa by going through Vegreville, Alberta. Google CIC Vegreville and see what they do there. If you choose to do that kind of application for an extension, you would ask for a multiple entry visa and then you can travel in and out of Canada on the same visa. You also have to pay for this type of extension.

Couple of things for you to think about. If you leave the country at Christmas and try to come back (thereby getting a new visa) you may be questioned at the border by CBSA and refused entry. This is a possibility. Make sure you have all of your application documents for the sponsorship with you to show them that you have an ongoing PR application in process. But there is still some risk. You won't even have received the AOR letter by December because processing time for first stage approval is at least 6 months. If they refuse to allow you to enter you will be sent home and if you are not in Canada when CIC is ready to make a decision on your inland application, it will be refused and you will have to start over. They will NOT transfer an inland application to an outland application. Same could happen if you try to "flagpole" in October.

If I were you, I would apply for an extension through Vegreville and ask for multiple entry visa if possible. And I would also wait until I received the AOR letter before leaving the country. Actually, I wouldn't leave the country at all with this process going on. Just my two cents.

 

[Bridgeen]

Not sure this will help at all...
I am British my husband is Canadian and I am just about to apply for residency. I came to Canada last sept (08) and had our child here whilst on maternity but knew I had to return to England to work out my mat leave for 8 weeks. While in Canada I applied to extend my visitor's visa and it cost 75 dollars to the place mentioned above. However, I applied for an extension of 8 weeks and was due to head back to England before I had heard anything from them!! Apparently when I phoned to see what was keeping my response (March) they had only started opening applications from January. When I finally returned to Canada I had received a letter saying I was allowed to stay in Canada until July 24 09. I panicked and phoned them again and realised that I was not in trouble because I had left and returned again I therefore started another 6 months on my visitors visa.