how long do you have to arrive after (hypothetical) approval - outland spousal

[likeursula]

Hi Everyone,

I am Canadian, my husband is Dutch and we have been living together in the Netherlands for 7 years, after 1 year of cohabiting in Canada while he was on a WHV (although we only recently married). After years of discussing the timing is finally right and we are about to embark on moving back to Canada, and we have decided to go ahead with the outland procedure. But before we apply I am wondering how long after you are approved do you have to arrive in Canada?

We want to start this process as soon as possible as we have read it can take up to 17 months...however, more reading on this forum has led me to believe it could be as quick as 6 months. I will finish my PhD in February 2017, and we would like to leave as soon as Feb 2017 but before that could be more tricky due to my (the sponsor's) educational/work obligations.

I read somewhere that you have up to a year after your medical, but we plan on submitting the medical upfront (if I understand the process correctly)...so does that mean if he got his medical April 2016, we could hypothetically arrive in April 2017 (assuming approval by then?) Does anyone have any more information on this?

Thanks in advance for your help!

 

[crzy_canadian]

we have read it can take up to 17 months...however, more reading on this forum has led me to believe it could be as quick as 6 months.

17 months is a global average for 80% of applications. Most likely yours will be completed in a shorter time frame given you have a solid application with minimal red flags.

I read somewhere that you have up to a year after your medical, but we plan on submitting the medical upfront (if I understand the process correctly)...so does that mean if he got his medical April 2016, we could hypothetically arrive in April 2017 (assuming approval by then?) Does anyone have any more information on this?

The medical is valid for one year, so in your hypothetical situation if they're ready to approve your file around February 2017, you'd have until April to land. If for some reason your file takes beyond 12 months, the VO can either extend your current medical's validity, or ask you to do another.

 

[cheng9999]

17 months is a global average for 80% of applications. Most likely yours will be completed in a shorter time frame given you have a solid application with minimal red flags.

The medical is valid for one year, so in your hypothetical situation if they're ready to approve your file around February 2017, you'd have until April to land. If for some reason your file takes beyond 12 months, the VO can either extend your current medical's validity, or ask you to do another.

Some people would do medical upfront, and let's say the case takes 9 months to process from sending in to issuing COPR, it means you still have 3 months to land. Some people do medical later, and in such cases, they "MAY" have a longer time before they need to land.

The COPR expiry usually coincides with the expiry of the medical report, which is 12 months. There are lots of discussions in the forum whether CIC will extend it, as the applicant to re-do, etc if the applicant hits 12 month. One poster said that CIC contacted them if they would land quickly, as the medical would expire within the month...this kind of proactiveness on the part of the VO appears to be the exception.

In practice, you see a lot of people in this forum asked to re-do their medicals. You also see from timeline on the spreadsheet that a lot of people do their medical quite early, then submit the application 2, sometimes 3 months later. This would give CIC a lot less time to work on their case. For us, we did medical just 2 days before submitting the package...even then, the application did not start processing 5 weeks later. If we had to do this again, we would probably have done medical later instead of upfront to give more time for the COPR expiry date.

The original intent of doing upfront medicals is that CIC would have everything upfront and if those cases are straight-forward (what this means would be another discussion in itself), the application usually takes much less than 1 year...after all, if CIC asks people to do upfront medicals and they expire, what's the point, right? I read this in some old article why CIC made this change of doing medicals upfront. In fact, I asked CIC how to proceed while deciding when/if to apply, and their standard answer is that everything "needs" to be done upfront. I only learned later in this forum that many people do not do that.

 

[floomy]

as above replies, medical is good for a year and if you are approved in a year, you do not need to re-do medical.

if your COPR is expired before your class and if you wanna avoid re-do medical, you can enter Canada to land and go back to finish your class.

you can actually move back to Canada after your degree.


FYI: living with Canadian citizen outside CANADA counts toward the 2 year of PR residency requirement.