Hi everyone,
I am new to this forum as an active member however I have been following it for over a year since my partner and I sent in our inland sponsorship application in December 2013. Before anything else, I wanted to send a huge THANK YOU to everyone on this forum. Your discussions and answers to questions have been enormously helpful to me while preparing and waiting for processing of our application. I would say you guys are 1000X more knowledgeable than the CIC call centre, and I am so grateful that a forum like this exists.
A bit of background about our application: I am sponsoring my partner, who is from a country that requires a visa for entry. She has been in Canada since 2012 on various study and work permits. When we applied for permanent residency in December 2013, she still had a study permit and accompanying open work permit. However, this expired in February 2014 and we did not apply for a visitor permit at the time because we were advised by our lawyer that it could be rejected and she could be forced to leave Canada. This means that my partner has been without status for 10 months and unable to work or study. We received notice that our application was received on January 2014, but no AIP yet.
I have two questions that I am really hoping someone can help me with:
1. When I received the email from CIC saying that they got our application, I assumed it was AOR. It said "This confirms that your application to Sponsor a Member of the Family Class has been received by Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC) on XXXX on behalf of the following member(s)".
However, I (the sponsor) was the only person to receive this letter and was subsequently able to log in on CIC's website. My partner, the actual applicant, never received a letter like this. Was this letter the AOR?
2. We have been waiting EXTREMELY anxiously for AIP in order to apply for a work permit and regain status, and when I read CIC's notice about granting work permits before AIP I almost cried with relief. However, I am nervous about the fact that my partner is without status. Does anyone know if being out of status will be a problem for our work permit application, once we are able or invited to apply? When I took CIC's online quiz about eligibility to apply for a work permit it said that my partner was ineligible because she had been out of status for more than 90 days. I am hoping that someone on this forum has had the experience of being out of status and then getting it restored through an OWP.
Thank you!