Hello,
I cross the canadian borders 2 years ago on my IMM 1000 and now I've gotten about 800 days counted so far stayed in Canada which makes me safe enough to apply for the PR card. So far I've been gathering the documents and Im curious if I need to prove that I stayed in Canada for that long with any documents or do they have the record within their computers upon my entry 2 years ago.
Any help would be appreciated.
Similar to the observations offered by
@armoured, but with a lot more emphasis on the importance of the information you submit with the application:
If all the information IRCC has is consistent with all the information you provide in the application, including
travel history, address history, and employment history, for the previous FIVE years, but especially the period of time since around June 2019 (when you have otherwise reported, in the forum, that you were waived into Canada after an absence for more than two decades), the information for the last two plus years more or less documenting your presence in Canada, where you have been living in Canada, and what you have been doing these past two years in Canada, that will likely be sufficient for Residency Obligation purposes, and IRCC will not require you to provide additional evidence to prove you were actually, physically present in Canada these past two years.
If you are asked for additional evidence, which is possible for any PR making a PR card application, the most important evidence is documentation verifying what you were doing, especially employment (employer and tax documents for example) or school attendance, and where you were living (rental documents including receipts, or bills for things like utilities or cable). If that evidence is in some regards lacking (which I understand could be a problem relative to employment history, since it appears you still do not have a SIN#), the PR can submit any other evidence that tends to show you were actually in Canada during the last two years. This can range from bank records to telephone records, records of participation in events or attending something like a gym, and testimonial letters from people who know you and know where you were during particular periods of time, noting that documentation from professionals, like lawyers, accountants, dentists, health care providers (even just receipts from walk-in clinics if out-of-service care was obtained), and such, or persons with whom you had formal business transactions, all these referring to particular dates and transactions, tend to be better evidence than general statements from friends and acquaintances, even though the professional or transaction declarations only reference a few particular dates here and there (an objectively more certain date, even as to just one transaction on one day, is stronger evidence than a friend's statement covering months or more).
Your history is unusual enough it would be very difficult for anyone here to forecast how things will go for you. (See concluding note.) Hopefully you have kept good records showing where you have been living these past two plus years, JUST IN CASE you need it. Assuming you have actually stayed in Canada these past two years, odds are very high there will be no issue about Residency Obligation compliance.
Some Further Explanations:
If when you arrived at a Port-of-Entry into Canada, say June 3, 2019 (a little while before you reported here, in June 2019, that you were waived into Canada) and you presented a document to the border official that showed your PR status in Canada, that SHOULD mean, and almost certainly does mean (but not absolutely for certain;
stuff happens), that CBSA records will confirm you entered Canada on that date.
If you have not left Canada since then,
that is all the CBSA records will show. That is, that you arrived and entered Canada on that date somewhat more than two years ago. Which is to say that record will say nothing about where you have been in the meantime.
So no, that will not be sufficient. The question is whether the information otherwise provided by the applicant, essentially the equivalent to giving testimony under oath (applicants must certify they they understand what they say in the application is subject to possible prosecution or deportation if there is any "
false statement" or "
concealment of a material fact" made in the application).
In particular, the application form itself requires the PR to provide information relevant to determining if the PR has met the PR Residency Obligation.
Travel history, address history, and employment history. If IRCC has no reason to question or doubt the accuracy and completeness of that information, and in particular that information is consistent with you being in Canada since June 2019, and there is no information or indication suggesting you exited Canada since the entry in June of 2019, that will ordinarily be enough for IRCC to be satisfied the PR was in Canada the days reported, by the applicant. And proceed to issue a new PR card without making non-routine requests for further evidence to prove you were actually IN Canada these past two years.
As long as your PR status is valid, and it is otherwise readily apparent you have been settled in Canada these past two years, even if IRCC is not fully persuaded your information meets the standard of proving you have been IN Canada for more than 730 days within the relevant five years, that will typically result in non-routine processing that delays a decision rather than an admissibility hearing. So, if the only question is RO compliance, and you really have been here the last two years, the worst case for a PR card application is it takes longer than the routine processing timeline.
Concluding Note: I would not have gone into such depth except your history is not at all common. There are not many reports from PRs absent from Canada for more than two decades who have then been waived into Canada, with border officials knowing the traveler is a PR, without a more extensive examination than you have reported. There have been no more than isolated reports, for many years, from PRs who landed before the system adopted the CoPR process. You appear to be stateless, which itself is not remarkably uncommon among Canadian PRs, but in conjunction with your other circumstances is uncommon, and so how and why and the circumstances of your entry back in 2019, whatever was involved, is nowhere near a commonly reported scenario here. You appear to have been managing these past two years without a SIN#. And so on. None of which points to any particular problem, not that I know of, but which is different enough to make it clear that the observations above are about Residency Obligation compliance, with no observations about whether or not there could be other issues. To be clear,
I am NOT suggesting there is any reason to fear there are any other issues . . . but your situation is unique enough, given what you have reported, I doubt anyone here can say one way or the other.
