Interview Invite

[canuck_in_uk]

Oh, I didn't notice that I missed the intro of the letter:

We are pleased to advise you that your final determination for permanent residence interview has been scheduled for...

Then followed by the date and location and the exact contents I posted above.

Lol, the most important part of the letter. This is a landing interview, so like I said, a few simple questions and you will become a PR.

 

[redherring]

Lol, the most important part of the letter. This is a landing interview, so like I said, a few simple questions and you will become a PR.

Oh wow. That's so great to hear! I was really nervous. I hope that would really be the case. Thank you very much for clearing this out. The moment I opened the email, I just saw "INTERVIEW" and the highlighted date and I already panicked. I just didn't expect that they have landing interviews within the country or without leaving? It makes a little sense now since they are asking for photos and passport.

 

[majesty]

Oh, I didn't notice that I missed the intro of the letter:

We are pleased to advise you that your final determination for permanent residence interview has been scheduled for...

Then followed by the date and location and the exact contents I posted above.

I think when you said your sponsor was just approved/decision made, you must be talking about the PA? They would not give you only a week's notice for a relationship interview. This is probably a landing interview. In that case, congrats! You are almost done!

 

[canuck_in_uk]

Oh wow. That's so great to hear! I was really nervous. I hope that would really be the case. Thank you very much for clearing this out. The moment I opened the email, I just saw "INTERVIEW" and the highlighted date and I already panicked. I just didn't expect that they have landing interviews within the country or without leaving? It makes a little sense now since they are asking for photos and passport.

Inland applicants always land at an IRCC office in Canada.

 

[geografa]

We knew our red flags coming into this. In fact the red flags are why we opted to not to apply for family sponsorship as Plan A for my partner to come to Canada (also it was going to take much longer under the old application system). He tried to apply on his own under EE, however due to bad luck ... he was never able to accumulate enough points to get an invitation to apply. Hence we did not apply right away and so this might be suspicious to them also.

Age difference should not play a factor, but I would be foolish to say that there would not be more grounds for suspicion for relationship fraud and let's face it, there is still a lot of prejudice even subconsciously in our society about why a younger man wants to be with an older woman (he must be in it for the money or to get PR in Canada). However, in general, I would agree with you that because common-law couples have to provide more proof of relationship status, I see why you say that there is less of a chance that they get interviewed, plus they have had to live together for a minimum of 1 year and this is not a requirement for married couples. After a year or more of living together, a more serious level of commitment should be reached.

In our case, whatever they want to ask us about to prove our commitment to each other, maybe it's one of the reasons I mentioned, because we covered all the bases being financially and emotionally interdependent as well as having been in a 4 plus year relationship ... we have multiple evidences of all these things. I can only speculate as to the reasons if our planned enquiries don't reveal anything further.

You know, I had never thought of it this way! I had this assumption that being married looked better to IRCC, but you make a good point about there being no requirement to have lived together even if you are married!
And yes, those subconscious societal biases are likely quite prevailing when the process kind of requires that our complex, messy, REAL life relationships and life trajectories somehow fit into a standardized 'model' for the sake of the immigration process which, yea, it's beaurocracy. It's hard to fit a square peg in a round hole, lol!!

 

[redherring]

I think when you said your sponsor was just approved/decision made, you must be talking about the PA? They would not give you only a week's notice for a relationship interview. This is probably a landing interview. In that case, congrats! You are almost done!

Thank you very much for making me feel optimistic! I did check my application progress and saw that they started processing it Jan 11, we got the letters today, Jan 16, and then the interview would be next week. I'm not sure what PA is but the letter my partner received says that you are approved as a sponsor something along those lines, definitely not "decision has been made."

I hope that they would just have landing interview for formality with your partner's application.

 

[majesty]

You know, I had never thought of it this way! I had this assumption that being married looked better to IRCC, but you make a good point about there being no requirement to have lived together even if you are married!
And yes, those subconscious societal biases are likely quite prevailing when the process kind of requires that our complex, messy, REAL life relationships and life trajectories somehow fit into a standardized 'model' for the sake of the immigration process which, yea, it's beaurocracy. It's hard to fit a square peg in a round hole, lol!!

Maybe in our case we should have gotten married ... however, we didn't want to do it just for the sake of applying. I got divorced in 2015 and just didn't feel like going down that road again, but we were committed to each other and that was all that mattered to us. We wrote letters explaining our relationship as per our immigration consultant under the old app, but we included them anyways under the new app. My partner mentioned in his letter that if we weren't committed to each other, it would have been much easier for us to find someone closer to each of us, instead we chose to keep a long distance relationship for 4 years and spend a lot of money and saved all our vacation time only to see each other and text/call each other everyday. Guess they didn't read this or that they think we have a lot of patience and hatched this very elaborate plan to get him into Canada.

Also it is hard enough going through everyday life not really wanting to divulge how we old we are etc as we know well enough how people judge us without even knowing us and our relationship. We are both pretty private people (maybe not after all this) and this is one of the reasons we were hesitant to choose this route to apply for PR for my partner. The thought of total strangers scrutinizing every aspect of our relationship, knowing our red flags, was why it took us so long to do this as we exhausted other routes for him to try and come here. We did mention this somewhere in our app, but maybe we should have emphasized this more ... however it's hard to include all these things when they want all the evidence streamlined now. But anyways, to the government we are just a number and too bad if you have to wait 2 years for an interview (you are not leaving this queue until we say so)!

 

[JulianaAndrew]

Maybe in our case we should have gotten married ... however, we didn't want to do it just for the sake of applying. I got divorced in 2015 and just didn't feel like going down that road again, but we were committed to each other and that was all that mattered to us. We wrote letters explaining our relationship as per our immigration consultant under the old app, but we included them anyways under the new app. My partner mentioned in his letter that if we weren't committed to each other, it would have been much easier for us to find someone closer to each of us, instead we chose to keep a long distance relationship for 4 years and spend a lot of money and saved all our vacation time only to see each other and text/call each other everyday. Guess they didn't read this or that they think we have a lot of patience and hatched this very elaborate plan to get him into Canada.

Also it is hard enough going through everyday life not really wanting to divulge how we old we are etc as we know well enough how people judge us without even knowing us and our relationship. We are both pretty private people (maybe not after all this) and this is one of the reasons we were hesitant to choose this route to apply for PR for my partner. The thought of total strangers scrutinizing every aspect of our relationship, knowing our red flags, was why it took us so long to do this as we exhausted other routes for him to try and come here. We did mention this somewhere in our app, but maybe we should have emphasized this more ... however it's hard to include all these things when they want all the evidence streamlined now. But anyways, to the government we are just a number and too bad if you have to wait 2 years for an interview (you are not leaving this queue until we say so)!

Maybe, maybe, perhaps big maybe, the reason why you're in queue for an interview is just for quality purposes. They also interview people sometimes because they have to keep their quality standards. Even if 100 applications were certain to be approved, they would still need to interview some. Maybe they will just ask very few questions, and give you the visa on the spot. What you can be sure of is we don't really know what's going on, and everything is just possible hints. You will only know once you have the interview.

 

[majesty]

Maybe, maybe, perhaps big maybe, the reason why you're in queue for an interview is just for quality purposes. They also interview people sometimes because they have to keep their quality standards. Even if 100 applications were certain to be approved, they would still need to interview some. Maybe they will just ask very few questions, and give you the visa on the spot. What you can be sure of is we don't really know what's going on, and everything is just possible hints. You will only know once you have the interview.

I thought of this too. However, whatever the reason, my concern is that I just want to know when they are going to give us the interview date, if at all ... it is the worse thing being in limbo or "in queue". My concern is that there are likely less applicants from Chile than some other Latin-American countries such as the DR where lots of applicants get interviewed and therefore they will hold interviews there every 2-3 months. My understanding is that they have to send someone down to where applicants live. If there aren't that many applicants there to be begin with and even less to get interviewed because Chile has one of the better economies in S. America and it is easy for Chileans to come to Canada as well they don't need a visa to travel there, only an eTA which is easy to get, then what I am afraid of is that it will take forever ... many more months until they get enough interviewees lined up before they set up the interview. Another applicant from the DR told me that there have been several people she knew from the DR who were told they were in queue for the interview and it never happened ... they just ended up having their PPR sent to them a few months later. She said this might also be a possibility since I don't have an interview date yet and there was no reasons listed as to what they were concerned about. This kind of sucks because I won't know which of these avenues we are going to go down.

 

[JulianaAndrew]

I thought of this too. However, whatever the reason, my concern is that I just want to know when they are going to give us the interview date, if at all ... it is the worse thing being in limbo or "in queue". My concern is that there are likely less applicants from Chile than some other Latin-American countries such as the DR where lots of applicants get interviewed and therefore they will hold interviews there every 2-3 months. My understanding is that they have to send someone down to where applicants live. If there aren't that many applicants there to be begin with and even less to get interviewed because Chile has one of the better economies in S. America and it is easy for Chileans to come to Canada as well they don't need a visa to travel there, only an eTA which is easy to get, then what I am afraid of is that it will take forever ... many more months until they get enough interviewees lined up before they set up the interview. Another applicant from the DR told me that there have been several people she knew from the DR who were told they were in queue for the interview and it never happened ... they just ended up having their PPR sent to them a few months later. She said this might also be a possibility since I don't have an interview date yet and there was no reasons listed as to what they were concerned about. This kind of sucks because I won't know which of these avenues we are going to go down.

Unfortunately the only thing you can do is wait. I know what it is like to be in the limbo. I'll be taking my medical exam on Tuesday next week, and I know I'm very close (perhaps 3 weeks or so) but I'm still very anxious and stressed out. I really hope everything turns out better for you two, people shouldn't have to wait this much. From the day they decided I needed an interview to the day I had my interview, it was 2 months and one week. And that's with a fast VO such as mine. These things do take quite some time, but again I hope you guys get it soon.

 

[canuck_in_uk]

Maybe in our case we should have gotten married ... however, we didn't want to do it just for the sake of applying. I got divorced in 2015 and just didn't feel like going down that road again, but we were committed to each other and that was all that mattered to us. We wrote letters explaining our relationship as per our immigration consultant under the old app, but we included them anyways under the new app. My partner mentioned in his letter that if we weren't committed to each other, it would have been much easier for us to find someone closer to each of us, instead we chose to keep a long distance relationship for 4 years and spend a lot of money and saved all our vacation time only to see each other and text/call each other everyday. Guess they didn't read this or that they think we have a lot of patience and hatched this very elaborate plan to get him into Canada.

Also it is hard enough going through everyday life not really wanting to divulge how we old we are etc as we know well enough how people judge us without even knowing us and our relationship. We are both pretty private people (maybe not after all this) and this is one of the reasons we were hesitant to choose this route to apply for PR for my partner. The thought of total strangers scrutinizing every aspect of our relationship, knowing our red flags, was why it took us so long to do this as we exhausted other routes for him to try and come here. We did mention this somewhere in our app, but maybe we should have emphasized this more ... however it's hard to include all these things when they want all the evidence streamlined now. But anyways, to the government we are just a number and too bad if you have to wait 2 years for an interview (you are not leaving this queue until we say so)!

Whatever red flags IRCC sees with your app wouldn't have been negated by being married, so don't cause yourself any anxiety playing "what if" based on that.

What are your cohabitation dates? When did you become common-law? Are you still living together?

 

[majesty]

Whatever red flags IRCC sees with your app wouldn't have been negated by being married, so don't cause yourself any anxiety playing "what if" based on that.

What are your cohabitation dates? When did you become common-law? Are you still living together?

I am not anxious about not being married ... if they only accepted married couples, then there would be no common-law status. In fact, being common-law is more restrictive and you have to submit a lot more evidence than married couples.

We lived together August 2, 2012 to August 2, 2013 in Canada when my partner came here for a working holiday visa (actually we were together longer technically speaking because when he had to leave Canada, he went to the US and we vacationed there for about a week to 10 days before he went back to his country and I went back home). We did not apply right away and this is where a lot of explanation was needed and we did actually try to explain this in our application as 1) we spent some time trying to get my partner a new work visa for the job he had left. This involved his employer of this last job in Canada applying for an LMIA first. Now he got a negative decision as his job classification was not in a category that was in "high demand". I went to see an immigration lawyer about what were our options. Family sponsorship was discussed, but at that point, we decided against it for a few reasons. We knew our red flags and weren't ready for strangers to scrutinize our relationship and my partner wanted to try and do this thing on his own first. 2) Also at that time for this country, the average processing time was 18 months, so with our red flags, probably about 2 years. We investigated other routes to come first. I stopped seeing the lawyer as it was costing us too much and not getting us anywhere fast. Ironically, for about 2 years, he decided to look into economic routes to come. When they came out with the EE program, he tried to apply there and took his IELTS twice. Meanwhile, we both had to live and make money so I went back to school and was working and taking care of my kid and then he got this crazy job where he had to work 12 hour days and 7 days a week on stretches and meanwhile trying to study for his IELTS and fill out forms for EE etc. Fast forward to 2015, we decided to look at family sponsorship again after my divorce was finalized. Meanwhile we still managed to see each other every 4-8 months on all our vacation days.

We barely qualified but apparently it is kosher enough what we submitted as they never asked us to submit more proof of cohabitation or proof of relationship. We are beneficiaries on each others' insurance plans/RRSPS for me and we have joint credit cards, Western Union receipts, we pay for each other when we were on vacations, accommodations and airplane tickets because we have been together for so long. In fact it took us a week or 2 to organize our passport stamps as we have been back and forth seeing each other for a total of about 10 or 11 times now. I had about 10 to 15 pages of this alone on my passport. The list goes on!

We are complicated but we are both really anal retentive and spent 4 - 6 months organizing our app (did the old forms then changed to new forms) including hiring a consultant to go over our app. We had to get certified translations too for our official docs.

Maybe they are wondering why we didn't get married .... we discussed this, but after being divorced ... being married is just a piece of paper to me ... if you are committed to each other, that is all that counts and the evidence speaks for itself. I understand why they want to interview us, but for some reason the exact concerns are not listed in the notes ... so hard to say what reason(s) exactly and what evidence we submitted they thought was lacking as they never asked us first to submit more proof, which we have lots of things still which they haven't seen.

 

[Miraclejj]

I am not anxious about not being married ... if they only accepted married couples, then there would be no common-law status. In fact, being common-law is more restrictive and you have to submit a lot more evidence than married couples.

We lived together August 2, 2012 to August 2, 2013 in Canada when my partner came here for a working holiday visa (actually we were together longer technically speaking because when he had to leave Canada, he went to the US and we vacationed there for about a week to 10 days before he went back to his country and I went back home). We did not apply right away and this is where a lot of explanation was needed and we did actually try to explain this in our application as 1) we spent some time trying to get my partner a new work visa for the job he had left. This involved his employer of this last job in Canada applying for an LMIA first. Now he got a negative decision as his job classification was not in a category that was in "high demand". I went to see an immigration lawyer about what were our options. Family sponsorship was discussed, but at that point, we decided against it for a few reasons. We knew our red flags and weren't ready for strangers to scrutinize our relationship and my partner wanted to try and do this thing on his own first. 2) Also at that time for this country, the average processing time was 18 months, so with our red flags, probably about 2 years. We investigated other routes to come first. I stopped seeing the lawyer as it was costing us too much and not getting us anywhere fast. Ironically, for about 2 years, he decided to look into economic routes to come. When they came out with the EE program, he tried to apply there and took his IELTS twice. Meanwhile, we both had to live and make money so I went back to school and was working and taking care of my kid and then he got this crazy job where he had to work 12 hour days and 7 days a week on stretches and meanwhile trying to study for his IELTS and fill out forms for EE etc. Fast forward to 2015, we decided to look at family sponsorship again after my divorce was finalized. Meanwhile we still managed to see each other every 4-8 months on all our vacation days.

We barely qualified but apparently it is kosher enough what we submitted as they never asked us to submit more proof of cohabitation or proof of relationship. We are beneficiaries on each others' insurance plans/RRSPS for me and we have joint credit cards, Western Union receipts, we pay for each other when we were on vacations, accommodations and airplane tickets because we have been together for so long. In fact it took us a week or 2 to organize our passport stamps as we have been back and forth seeing each other for a total of about 10 or 11 times now. I had about 10 to 15 pages of this alone on my passport. The list goes on!

We are complicated but we are both really anal retentive and spent 4 - 6 months organizing our app (did the old forms then changed to new forms) including hiring a consultant to go over our app. We had to get certified translations too for our official docs.

Maybe they are wondering why we didn't get married .... we discussed this, but after being divorced ... being married is just a piece of paper to me ... if you are committed to each other, that is all that counts and the evidence speaks for itself. I understand why they want to interview us, but for some reason the exact concerns are not listed in the notes ... so hard to say what reason(s) exactly and what evidence we submitted they thought was lacking as they never asked us first to submit more proof, which we have lots of things still which they haven't seen.

From the history of you two that you mentioned above, you may not realize that the past refusals that your partner got from applying other streams actually are a negative factor, in the eyes of CIC. Now, CIC will most likely to see your case as his desperate move to immigrate to Canada, plus your age differences, your previous marriage and the kid(s) you have from your previous marriage, they compound one on top of each other. The thread of all refusal cases had a lot cases were initially refused with big age gap, they all had those evidences that you mentioned above (maybe fewer visiting times), and nonetheless, were refused. So, the big age gap is a very big red flag and most time it will play as a major role for the outcome, especially when it is abnormal in your partner's culture.

And sometimes my wild guess is that for some cases, CIC is intentionally withholding the process, it is like a stress test to see if your relationship is genuine or not. Fake relationship won't last long. Hopefully, it is the case.

Anyway, when I checked your timeline, it is still within the 12 months mark, and you do understand that any complication will result in longer wait. But I sincerely hope that the VO will arrange your interview soon. Good Luck.

 

[majesty]

From the history of you two that you mentioned above, you may not realize that the past refusals that your partner got from applying other streams actually are a negative factor, in the eyes of CIC. Now, CIC will most likely to see your case as his desperate move to immigrate to Canada, plus your age differences, your previous marriage and the kid(s) you have from your previous marriage, they compound one on top of each other. The thread of all refusal cases had a lot cases were initially refused with big age gap, they all had those evidences that you mentioned above (maybe fewer visiting times), and nonetheless, were refused. So, the big age gap is a very big red flag and most time it will play as a major role for the outcome, especially when it is abnormal in your partner's culture.

And sometimes my wild guess is that for some cases, CIC is intentionally withholding the process, it is like a stress test to see if your relationship is genuine or not. Fake relationship won't last long. Hopefully, it is the case.

You might be right about breaking .... although that is ridiculous ... we have already been apart for 4 years ... and still together ... a lot of people here are already divorced and got new partners to sponsor.

Anyway, when I checked your timeline, it is still within the 12 months mark, and you do understand that any complication will result in longer wait. But I sincerely hope that the VO will arrange your interview soon. Good Luck.

He never ended up applying. He never accumulated enough points to get an invitation

If he actually did ... he might be here now! I have also seen cases of big case differences where they didn't get an interview and were approved fast. I don't think they are supposed to discriminate according to age ... that is not kosher. We don't have any cultural barriers for age differences ... my family knows about him and he lived with my kid for a year already and we have pictures. I also met his family and it really shouldn't matter. I realize that people in genuine relationships get refused ... there is nothing one can do but appeal. I realize all the red flags ... we have been stuck in this immigration nightmare from all perspectives for the last 4 years .... I could probably be an immigration consultant myself and unfortunately know too much about how much red tape and unfairness there is in this system. Next week we are at 12 months .... this ain't going to be done by next Thursday!

 

[JulianaAndrew]

I don't think they are supposed to discriminate according to age ... that is not kosher.

Actually they are. Differences in age is important, although it's not all of it of course. Specially when the woman is older, that's particularly a bigger concern. It is more common that couples will fall within a range that's not too big (around 5 years would be considered normal). I wouldn't be speaking about your particular situation, but big age gaps do generate questions, specially if there are other things that represent concerns too.