Inland vs Outland

[Chii]

I met my wife back in middle school when I was still in China. I have immigrated with my parents since then, got my PR and eventually became a Canadian citizen. We just got married last month and I'm currently working on the IMM forms and documents. I have a few questions that I'm quite confused about, and if anyone could please shed some light I would really appreciate it

A bit of background: She's currently working full-time in China and has a visitor visa (multi entry) that is valid through 2018 or so. We've been dating long-distance for 2 years before getting married. We wanna start living our new life together ASAP.

Questions:

1. Should we do inland or outland? I used to be pretty sure about choosing outland, as Beijing used to have just a 10 month processing period. Now i notice that they've "consolidated" the processing centers, and the wait period skyrockets to 17 months.

If we go with inland application:

2. I've seen it somewhere that if I proceed with inland application, we can never leave Canada before she gets her PR (which takes 27 months). Does this prevent us from, say taking long weekends off at New York City, or is it only targeting long term absence?

3. How does the work permit "pilot program" work? Does she get the permit quickly? How likely is the "pilot program" going to continue after the end of this year?

If we go with the outland application:

4. Is it at all possible for her to get some sort of work permit as well, during the 17 months period? If so, what needs to be done?

5. If the answer to 4 is "No", let's say I just want her to live with me during the waiting period, with or without a job. E.g. de facto inland. Can she just come over and live with the visitor visa (obviously subject to the 180-day stay rule), or does she need to re-apply for another visa, or the worst case, she cannot enter Canada at all before reaching the end of the 17 month period (that would be a nightmare).

Sorry about asking so many questions at once

 

[floomy]

1. outland, still faster than inland.

2. for inland, she can leave, but there is no guarantee that she can re-enter Canada ( whether it is long or show vacation)
if she is rejected to re- enter, her applications is cancelled and start again from beginning.

3. OWP takes 4-5 months now.

4. she can apply for work permit, but need to get a job offer and LMIA from the company (which is not easy to find many company would do)

5. she can stay with you while waiting for pr.
if she applies before she enter canada and show CBSA a proof of outland app. she may have more than a year.
or
she can renew her visitor visa with a proof that she applied for outland, then she would get a year or so.

 

[Decoy24601]

Now i notice that they've "consolidated" the processing centers, and the wait period skyrockets to 17 months.

This is wrong. They haven't consolidated the processing centers, they only changed the way you view processing times. They now take an average over all of the visa-offices applications instead of it being office specific. 17 months is very inaccurate. Inland still takes 2 years.

For example, the Ottawa VO is currently processing applications in about 4-6 months. Most visa offices process applications well under 17 months. 17 months is the time it takes to process 80% of applications across all visa offices.

 

[Rob_TO]

Now i notice that they've "consolidated" the processing centers, and the wait period skyrockets to 17 months.

As mentioned, this is pretty much a useless time. It's basically saying that 80% of the apps in the world are done in some random time shorter than 17 months. So in terms of figuring out times for a specific visa office, one shouldn't even look at that number.

You should go by the thread on this forum dedicated to your visa office, and see people's recent experiences for processing times. That will be a better gauge of time than the CIC website.

 

[Chii]

Thank you for all your kind replies!!!