crossing border on saturday - any last minute advice???

[minna]

Hey

Just a quick question....Is your husband a citizen of US?

I do not know your history, but your case seems similar to mine. My husband lives in US, but very close to border (So do I). We will be filing for his PR soon, but i wanted him to be able to visit me as we are hardly an hour away. I was initially thinking of moving in with him and coming to work daily (in Canada), but since I need to be a resident of Canada for his application, I cannot.

Any piece of advice...or suggestions for us?
Will highly appreciate it

Hi there - yes, my husband is a US citizen. I'm actually a dual US-Can citizen. We had been living in the US.

But, if you are a canadian PR, you will need to live in Canada to file for his PR.

You should have no problems visiting each other, especially once your application is in process, if you are not requesting stays longer than a week or two. It is only when you are requesting long-term visits (essentially to wait out the PR process) that you must be more careful.

If you get accustomed to just keeping a box of the potentially necessary information/paperwork in your cars, then it will be available if needed. Keep good records of these visits! You can use them to show additional proof of your relationship, if that ever becomes necessary in your PR process.

 

[Misplaced Brit]

Presumably they issued you a Visitor Record. What exactly does it say? I know the border officers like to be kind of their little castle, but I'm fairly sure they can't obligate you to leave Canada and re-enter presenting proof of your PR application. They can limit your stay as a visitor to a certain length, but depending on exactly what is written on your visitor record, it might be much more beneficial to you to apply to extend your stay as a visitor via CPC-Vegreville rather than run the gauntlet at the border again.

It's a visitor Record yes.

Basically, it says I'm prohibited from engaging in any employment, or academic, professional or vocational training course, and that I must leave Canada by the 25th of October, then we must furnish 'proof' at Douglas on the 25th of October.

On a second piece of paper that the immigration officer gave to the hubby, there is a list of things that we need to take with us. This says we need to take the marriage certificate, photos of the wedding, and proof via receipts that we sent my application for PR off.

I'm inclined to think this will be proof that I have 'implied status' in Canada to minimize the chances of me being refused re-entry. The officer actually told us that we can just cross into the States and come back around with a US Border stamp to 'prove' that I left the country. My hubby is convinced that he was trying to scare us into doing the right thing, because when I crossed the border in July, we were still waiting on my Police certificate coming from the UK. If I'd known about this forum back then, it would have been a huge help, because I would have known that we didn't need to send the Police certificate in with the application and that we could have sent it later.

Now I guess it's all down to which Immigration officer sees us when we recross a week today. Unfortunately, we have no choice other than to cross the border since the visitor record says we must go back to Douglas and furnish them with proof that we met the conditions set out in the visitor record.

 

[matthewc]

It's a visitor Record yes.

Basically, it says I'm prohibited from engaging in any employment, or academic, professional or vocational training course, and that I must leave Canada by the 25th of October, then we must furnish 'proof' at Douglas on the 25th of October.

On a second piece of paper that the immigration officer gave to the hubby, there is a list of things that we need to take with us. This says we need to take the marriage certificate, photos of the wedding, and proof via receipts that we sent my application for PR off.

I'm inclined to think this will be proof that I have 'implied status' in Canada to minimize the chances of me being refused re-entry. The officer actually told us that we can just cross into the States and come back around with a US Border stamp to 'prove' that I left the country. My hubby is convinced that he was trying to scare us into doing the right thing, because when I crossed the border in July, we were still waiting on my Police certificate coming from the UK. If I'd known about this forum back then, it would have been a huge help, because I would have known that we didn't need to send the Police certificate in with the application and that we could have sent it later.

Now I guess it's all down to which Immigration officer sees us when we recross a week today. Unfortunately, we have no choice other than to cross the border since the visitor record says we must go back to Douglas and furnish them with proof that we met the conditions set out in the visitor record.

That's frustrating, but if they've put a "must provide proof at date/time" condition on there you should comply with it. It would seem less risky if you could apply to extend your stay inland, but hopefully whichever IO you see this time will be less on their high horse.