Help - Visa Expiry before Common-Law Eligibility

[elkj]

Hi everyone,


I will be sponsoring my common-law partner inland. he is currently in Canada on a young professionals visa under the IEC program. he entered Canada on March 25th 2017, and his visa is good for a year from the date of entry - it expires March 24th 2018. the visa is not extendable and he has already participated in the working holiday category before - he can't apply for iec again. also, he is from Germany, so he is visa-exempt and has his eTa.


we are using this period of time as the year of cohabitation. I know that we cannot file our PR application + open work permit application until after we actually hit the 365 day mark (March 25, 2018)


as his visa technically expires a day before this, and obviously we don't want to cut it so close (we thought the whole time his visa expired on the 25th and now we're scrambling to renew his permit somehow) our question is: is it possible for him to somehow maintain his worker status with implied status for this one day (if we file the next day for common-law + OWP)? as far as we know, he isn't eligible for any other work permit.


I know we have the option for him to enter as a visitor, but that would be the last option as of course it would be ideal if he can work throughout the process.


has anyone been in this situation and can offer insight?


also - I swear I've seen on multiple places that the waiting time for an OWP as part of the inland application is ~4 months, but I can't seem to find this stat anymore and the CIC processing time checker says 6 weeks for a new work permit application - can anyone advise regarding this?


thank you!

 

[Rob_TO]

He should apply online to extend his status as a visitor, shortly before his IEC expires. This will give him implied visitor status. He must stop working once the IEC expires.

Then after becoming officially common-law, it will take you some time to finalize the PR application package and send it along with the OWP app. As long as he's still on implied visitor status at the time, the OWP app will give new implied status.

He can only start working again once the OWP is physically received in the mail.

 

[WeegieInOttawa]

Yup what Rob said..

You can apply for the visitor status right up until the day his IEC expires so no "cutting it fine" to worry about. You can literally apply for visitor status on the 23rd at 11.55pm if you have to. (I wouldn't recommend leaving it THAT late but I have done it the day before current status expiry). The app (for visitor status) gives him implied status (as a visitor).

But as Rob said..stopping working on IEC expiry is unavoidable.