Hi sophieee, thanks for all your information. Reading through this thread has been helpful, but also raised some questions for me.
I'll try to make my situation as clear and detailed for you!
In Brief:
I'm a US citizen. On our last re-entry to Canada from vacation (March 21), I was given a visitor's record of 1 month (April 20). This is my fault because I said we were common-law and the IO at the airport said I needed to change my status to accurately reflect my intent. Anyhow, my common-law partner is a Canadian citizen. We have lived together for 1 year and 5 months (6 of those months were while living/traveling abroad and can be easily proved) and we'll have a 1 year rental lease with both our names by May 2015. My common-law partner has a stable job so sponsorship approval should be no problem.
Many people have recommended outland for faster processing times, esp. given that I'm a US citizen. And I'm aware there is no guarantee that an OWP permit would be issued in 4 months via inland.
Questions:
1a. Would my request to extend my stay as visitor be granted if I were to apply outland? If we travel (as we do plan to again after this summer ends), someone on this forum told me that every time I exit and re-enter, my visitor status is thrown out and reassessed at the border regardless of an extension expiry date. Would I need to be careful with what I say at the border (i.e. say I'm visiting, say I'm living in Canada and we're waiting for my outland app to be processed)? I mean, saying "living" last time at the border was what got the IO in a funk over my visitor status.
1b. So in that case, would it be safer to go the inland app route and then, travel after an OWP is issued, whenever that may be?
2. Can OWPs be requested when doing an outland app? Would it make sense to do that and if so, where can I find estimated processing times for that?
3. Should I apply to extend my stay as visitor separately (I'm in the midst of doing this online thru the CIC website with IMM5708E) and then also submit another request to change my status to worker (IMM5556) along with my OWP package (which will be submitted with my inland PR application/sponsorship approval)? This would help make sure I'm never out of status if something is rendered incomplete for some reason, right?
Basically, what it all boils down to is that I can't decide whether we should go inland or outland. First and formost, we want to reside together in Canada (and for common-law sponsorship to be valid, this seems to be high necessity anyways).
Second, having an OWP would be great since I've been unable to work for over year (and we don't mind the long wait when there's an OWP).
But then third, we still want to travel by the end of this year (and of course in the future), but obviously not at the risk of losing the PR application or my status. ....which
I know, but can't a girl have it all?
Any advice will be helpful! And feel free to tell me if something is not a good idea!