terucov said:
Hi,
My American fiance and I have been together for three years and we want to live together in Canada. Most of this seems pretty straightforward after the changes in December 2016, but we're still unsure about two things:
1. How do we get married? Does it matter which country we get married in? Does it matter how we go about it (answers at the border, how big the wedding is, etc)?
2. Once we're married and it's time for him to cross the border, how do we do this properly? What changes have been put in place re: living inside or outside of Canada during the approval process?
I went to a sponsorship info session and the lady seemed to give me a lot of advice that did not add up (like suggesting he cross the border as a visitor, pretending it's a regular vacation and apply/start living here as soon as he gets here), so I want to double check with you guys.
I don't know that it really matters which country you get married in. We chose Canada for that because most of my husband's family is there, it was closer to our friends, and I don't have much left in the way of family where I used to live. We did not have a large wedding. Mostly his family, a few of mine, and some mutual friends. Backyard affair. We crossed the border together by vehicle. I was honest about why I was there, I had return tickets with me for a month later (I wasn't asked to see them) and the agent asked what we were thinking about in terms of immigration and we told him that we planned to apply Outland. He seemed satisfied that we knew the rules.
On the flip side, just prior to that my husband had come down to the U.S. to stay with me (we combined two visits to make it a longer one) and the U.S. people were grumpy with him that he wasn't interested in getting married down in the U.S. or moving there.
I crossed the border once after we were married but before applying, and twice after applying but before having the COPR in hand. I told them on the first visit after we married why I was there (to fill out and submit the Outland application). My next visit was a few months later, for Christmas. Then we came up immediately after we received our passport request so we could have the COPR sent to us in Canada. I had return tickets for all of those visits except for the last one (which was, of course, the only time I was actually asked for a return ticket.)
Keep in mind that, for several reasons, I chose to not live in Canada during the process. I have a dependent child, and I didn't want to uproot her entirely before we knew for sure we'd been approved. We did find out after the fact we would have been able to enroll her in school in our district tuition-free as long as we provided proof the application was in process, but we hadn't seriously considered doing so anyway. I also had the equivalent of a house full of stuff crammed into my apartment back in the U.S. I wasn't comfortable putting most of it in storage (I lived fairly far from the border) for an undetermined amount of time, and I was equally uncomfortable with the idea of trying to move all our stuff across the border prior to approval. So I really only have experience doing it from that perspective.
With the new process, since the first of the newer kit of applications are getting looked at, it's really difficult to say what it's going to mean in terms of processing times. Right now there are some outland applicants who used the old kit who've been getting approved in a little over two months. I swear one was less. For me, the entire process was a bit over five months. On average for Americans it's been running around 4-6 months. If you're looking at doing inland, they're saying 12 months maximum now. But with the speed at which most Americans have, up until now, been getting approved, it doesn't seem worth doing because you still have to wait four months for the work permit. You could be entirely finished as an outland applicant within the same period of time (theoretically). If your spouse wanted to stay with you for the duration of processing as an outland applicant, they could. If the processing time went longer than six months (which is generally the default amount of time you' can stay unless they tell you otherwise at the border), you could apply to extend his stay. He wouldn't be able to work in Canada during that time.
