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Extending our stay while waiting for Permanent Residency

Blue665

Newbie
Dec 3, 2011
1
0
I'll try to quickly sum up our situation so I can get to my questions:

I am an American and my spouse is an Indian. We moved to Canada when I did a 1 year postgraduate course at a college in Toronto. After the course was over I applied for my postgraduate work permit, which was granted for one year. Eventually we moved to Saskatchewan so that I could find fulltime work here and gain my 960 hours and 6 months of work so that we could apply for permanent residency through the SINP (Saskatchewan Immigrant Nominee Program). I am currently work fulltime (40 hours a week) as a floor associate in retail, and expect to finish my 6 months and 960 hours in mid-March, 2012. My employer has already agreed to give me a letter saying I am a fulltime, permanent employee for SINP purposes. However, my postgraduate work permit expires on April 30, 2012.

My spouse has been working with a bank since November, 2010 on a spousal dependent work permit. He was able to transfer over to Saskatchewan and is now a financial services manager.

My question is: is there any way for us to remain in Canada and continue working after my postgraduate work permit (and thus his spousal work permit) expires, until we receive our PR card? I read somewhere that for the students working 6 months of full time through the SINP program, it can take as little as 3 months (though I cannot find the website where I originally read that information and am not even sure if it is true). Is there any implied status that we can continue on before we get our PR cards? Would one of us have to apply for a course? Would it be difficult for my spouse to get his company to temporarily sponsor him while we wait? Would it be easier for me because I am the main applicant, even though my job takes less skills? It's so confusing and we know there are not a lot of options for us come April. Any information would be greatly appreciated. Thanks for taking the time to read this!