Hello, I'm a Canadian citizen by birth trying to sponsor my wife for her permanent residency.
A little bit of background info:
I moved to Mexico in 2008 and met my wife there, we've been happily married since June 2009. I filed to be a non-resident of Canada a few years ago, and we have been content living in Mexico and having freedom to travel. Now we would like to move back to Canada to settle down and start a family. I work online doing freelance work.
Here's where it gets difficult.
Since Nov 2013 we've been travelling between Canada, Mexico, and the Dominican Republic; visiting family and friends. During the course of those travels my mexican residency expired. We've spent most of the time in the DR, but never more than 6 months consecutively (April will be 6 months for our latest stay, so I'm trying to get the application in before then and hoping we don't need to get the extra police record paperwork for here since from what I've heard they're just so disorganized here that it's hard to get). DR customs has told me multiple times that as long as I don't want to buy property or work here, we don't need residency, and the way the immigration law works is that we just pay an exit fee when we leave the country. As such we don't have residency here and are just here as tourists. We've been staying in various vacation rentals and with friends.
On my application I have left the DR off as places we've lived since its never been 6+ months, and left my wife's parents place as our residency, since that's our home base, and we will be returning there shortly. I am including a letter with the application explaining all of the above as to why my mexican residency has expired (I understand I need to include a copy of it, since I don't live in Canada?). Also adding that I will be renewing it for the duration of the application process.
Have I done this correctly? Any advice/suggestions for our situation would be appreciated.
Thanks!
Tyson
A little bit of background info:
I moved to Mexico in 2008 and met my wife there, we've been happily married since June 2009. I filed to be a non-resident of Canada a few years ago, and we have been content living in Mexico and having freedom to travel. Now we would like to move back to Canada to settle down and start a family. I work online doing freelance work.
Here's where it gets difficult.
Since Nov 2013 we've been travelling between Canada, Mexico, and the Dominican Republic; visiting family and friends. During the course of those travels my mexican residency expired. We've spent most of the time in the DR, but never more than 6 months consecutively (April will be 6 months for our latest stay, so I'm trying to get the application in before then and hoping we don't need to get the extra police record paperwork for here since from what I've heard they're just so disorganized here that it's hard to get). DR customs has told me multiple times that as long as I don't want to buy property or work here, we don't need residency, and the way the immigration law works is that we just pay an exit fee when we leave the country. As such we don't have residency here and are just here as tourists. We've been staying in various vacation rentals and with friends.
On my application I have left the DR off as places we've lived since its never been 6+ months, and left my wife's parents place as our residency, since that's our home base, and we will be returning there shortly. I am including a letter with the application explaining all of the above as to why my mexican residency has expired (I understand I need to include a copy of it, since I don't live in Canada?). Also adding that I will be renewing it for the duration of the application process.
Have I done this correctly? Any advice/suggestions for our situation would be appreciated.
Thanks!
Tyson