INLAND APPLICATIONS 2014

[jaisask]

Thanks screech339.

After getting OWP, can we apply for TRV since she is planning to see her ailing mother.

Yes your wife would get implied status as a study visa. Once your wife get OWP approved, she loses her study visa and can no longer study. She loses her study visa status but gain her work visa instead.

 

[Blissy_78]

Submitting an Inland application alone does not give the applicant implied status, once their legal status expires. You must have submitted an Open Work Permit (OWP), or a Study Permit application with your Inland application PRIOR to your status expiring to have implied status.

As chakrab pointed out, CIC seems to be ok with a person without status applying for PR, but CBSA has a completely different view on those in Canada without status. If you do not maintain your status you can be removed from Canada by CBSA.

I submitted an OWP together with the PR application because my current WP will expire on July 31. I called up CIC to clarify this concern and that is when they informed me about "implied status".

Thanks for the information, i wasn't really aware of CBSA's existence until i read this thread and made mention of it.

 

[sophieee]

Hi Sophiee,

Are u applying OWP or student permit?

we included OWP in sponsorship application. My wife is on study permit, which is gonna expire in 3 months.

I talked to CIC on this and as mentioned in earlier posts they always say my wife ll get implied status as soon as her study permit expires.

I'm applying for visitor extension.

 

[Smsm81]

No, I think I didn't... Honestly, I believed that they will be able to locate my application according to the UCI#, so I didn't send them everything. Next time I will be more prepared.
Actually I'm thinking about applying again right now, even if I have status till October. It would make my life easier if I get one year extension, for example, I could have a permanent driver's licence, a BCID card... I don't know how strange would it seem for them, that I'm applying now when I have status for 4 months. What do you think?

I believe they dont mind/care when you apply for it,However, I am not sure, they will give you a valid one year visa extension from the date they start to work on your App. Meaning if they will work on your App on July your visa will be valid till July 2015. which means you would be loosing 4 months. I am not sure just guessing.

 

[sophieee]

I believe they dont mind/care when you apply for it,However, I am not sure, they will give you a valid one year visa extension from the date they start to work on your App. Meaning if they will work on your App on July your visa will be valid till July 2015. which means you would be loosing 4 months. I am not sure just guessing.

That's not a problem, for driving licence and BCID I need a visa which is valid for more than 6 months. And hopefully in November I will be able to get an OWP, so I won't need a visitor visa anymore.

 

[computergeek]

So as some of you who signed the petition that civic posted might know, a reporter at the Toronto Star is working on a story about the affected couples dealing with the exorbitant waiting periods from the CIC.

I wrote to the reporter and shared my personal story, and he wrote back asking if I'd be willing to be identified on the news, with a phone interview and a photo of my husband and I.

Now I have a question for you guys. Do you think that identifying ourselves and making a stink will in any way harm our application process, considering our application has not even been opened yet?

Would be very interested in hearing your feedback!

Thanks!

The squeaky wheel gets the grease. Being public and vocal (and a potential source of embarrassment) makes it MORE likely that you'll move along faster - so they can then use you as a poster child of "see, we're very reasonable here."

At least I found that in my own complex case (7 months for a case that would normally take 18-24 months - most likely to avoid the potential embarrassment of a negative Judicial Review finding in my prior refusal.)

 

[Monkeyfish]

computergeek, I agree that it's worthwhile to speak up, but I wonder if it would make any sense for ME to do so, since I'm still within the "reasonable" time period for waiting. ??? I think ALL the people who had their applications moved from V to M should be writing to this reporter and going public with their stories.

 

[computergeek]

computergeek, I agree that it's worthwhile to speak up, but I wonder if it would make any sense for ME to do so, since I'm still within the "reasonable" time period for waiting. ??? I think ALL the people who had their applications moved from V to M should be writing to this reporter and going public with their stories.

You're not going to court or complaining to your MP, you're using the press - exercising your right to speak out on a political issue. Were CIC to decide to "punish" you for something like that, I cannot imagine any judge thinking they had acted wiithin the bounds of their remit.

To be honest, I suspect it won't make any difference to your file's processing but it MIGHT put some pressure on the government to improve things.

 

[mary63]

so it's been 109 days and still no AOR . I am going to call the call center. do you guys know if the sponsor has to call? or is it ok if i (the applicant) call? Thanks!

 

[screech339]

so it's been 109 days and still no AOR . I am going to call the call center. do you guys know if the sponsor has to call? or is it ok if i (the applicant) call? Thanks!

Up to the stage of AOR and including AIP stage, both the sponsor and applicant can call call centre on the status of the application.

However once the application reaches AIP, only the applicant can call the CIC call center unless the sponsor is added to the representative form.

After AIP, the call centre can only respond to the applicant due to privacy concerns.

Had I known this, I would have added myself to representative form with the PR application so that I could still get the update status on my wife's behalf.

Screech339

 

[mary63]

Thanks a lot Screech339

 

[mary63]

my visa application was rejected today and the reasons are listed as: immigration status, purpose of visit, and fail to provide current enrolment and academic standing. I am here on a study permit but their system did not ask me to upload proof of my academic standing and you know it's not possible to upload extra documents!

is this common to be rejected for a visa while we are in the process of PR? i will go see the MP this week. anyone has had this situation and can share their experience please? thanks!

 

[Ponga]

my visa application was rejected today and the reasons are listed as: immigration status, purpose of visit, and fail to provide current enrolment and academic standing. I am here on a study permit but their system did not ask me to upload proof of my academic standing and you know it's not possible to upload extra documents!

is this common to be rejected for a visa while we are in the process of PR? i will go see the MP this week. anyone has had this situation and can share their experience please? thanks!

Sorry to hear that. When does your current status expire?

What's your plan B?

 

[crmalone44]

I realize the futility of this complaint, but I do think this process (inland) is incredibly punitive for the those choose to do this. For example, my work permit will run out in July and I will then be on implied status. Nonetheless, I lose my OHIP (I am in Ontario) and ability to travel home (U.S.). Meanwhile, I pay taxes while on implied status, which, theoretically, would, in some measure, be put towards the health care system. Furthermore, I am locked into a job I hate, though I am quite fortunate to have another employer processing an LMO for me. Though others are not nearly as fortunate as me, even this is processing is expensive (private health care once health care is useless).

My wife is Canadian. Pays taxes her whole life. I have paid taxes the entire duration I have been here. I also paid $1,040 in processing fees towards this end. Truthfully, I doubt my application would take 5 hours review, process, and make a decision. My app is quite cut and dry and all documentation is provided. Purely on the processing fees alone, a person could make 100-200 dollars an hour to review my application (or any app). Meanwhile, we just wait and others can not work, can not access health care, nor can travel home. While I am not inclined to be litigious, it seems there would be grounds for significant lawsuit against CIC. It seems many people in our situation are following CIC rules to the letter and this rules truly cost us money and duress. The impact is serious and I truly struggle to understand the problem. Lack of funding for CIC employees? Inept management or systems? I don't know.

But our collective issues seem quite real. Sorry to vent.

 

[computergeek]

While I am not inclined to be litigious, it seems there would be grounds for significant lawsuit against CIC. It seems many people in our situation are following CIC rules to the letter and this rules truly cost us money and duress. The impact is serious and I truly struggle to understand the problem. Lack of funding for CIC employees? Inept management or systems? I don't know.

Immigration is a political issue. Existing inhabitants of the country are convinced that foreigners will come and take the jobs away. This is true in the US as well. Indeed, in some ways the US is worse in that regard - someone without status in the US cannot return to status in the country, and sponsorship of a spouse/partner that has gone out of status can take many, many painful years (I've seen someone go through this. They decided to give up after six years of him trying to get his US green card.) But it goes the other ways as well: the US doesn't use their health care system as a battering ram to prohibit people from immigrating, whereas Canada routinely does.

Thus, there's no political will to make immigration anything other than painfully slow. Doing so would simply encourage more immigration and thus more people trying to take jobs away from those already in Canada.

Of course, the rules are completely different if you're a business. In that case you can bring in foreign workers, treat them like slaves and if the workers complain they're told that they have no rights as foreigners or they're sent home.

The current government is clearly anti-immigration. They're convinced that most marriages are MOCs (they literally equated refused spouse/partner applications with relationships of convenience when they announced the provisional in the fall of 2012), that increased processing times are acceptable - and that's in spite of successfully completing multi-year efforts to streamline the process (GCMS replacing FOSS and CAIPS, use of electronic barcoded forms to speed data entry, etc). They continue to close and consolidate offices. The US used to have five offices routinely handling PR applications. They now have two. The processing times have doubled - which makes sense if they transferred the workload from the shuttered offices to the remaining offices without any significant increase in staff. Note: Buffalo's work was shifted to what is now CPC-O.

Yes, it's slow and cumbersome and inefficient.

Oh, and you can't blame CIC for OHIP. Note that each province is different. Ontario just happens to restrict health care to those with AIP or work permits. The rules are different in other provinces (like Alberta, where they seem to be quite happy to cover the spouse of an Alberta resident. Ah, but they don't recognize common-law status until the couple have been together three years!)