Landing - bringing in a car

[Vic1234]

Any advise?

PNP approved Sept 09
PR application Mar 2010
Meds submitted Sept 2010
Permanant resident fee Sept 2010

Our PR isn't through yet. Our personal belongings arrived Dec 2009 including our car, we have not yet declared them and believe this is done when we get our PR. We need to purchase a second car is it possible to go back to the US where we still have our US CC's and buy a second car and bring it back into Canada? We are not able to get financing here until PR is through, we have been waiting a long time and don't see an end to this anytime soon.

Thanks

 

[jenni_usa]

Nobody really answers questions on this forum, do they??

I will give you my experience so far from living here in Canada from the last 9 months. We are also awaiting our PR through the PNP program. Our application was just submitted a few weeks ago though...so we have quite a while.

The car you brought into Canada can be temporarily imported (no fees or anything). This basically allows you to insure and put license plates on it. However, if it is financed...your finance company in the US may not like this. If you own it, then you should not have a problem. But I would suggest temporarily importing it prior to getting your PR confirmed.

If you are thinking about purchasing a car in the US while living in Canada - you will probably not be able to do it (if you finance it) as your employer is obviously in Canada and you live in Canada. The finance companies will not allow this. You can only do this if you purchase with cash and then you would have to either temporarily import or permanently import the vehicle into Canada.

You may be able to purchase a car within Canada with your foreign worker status. We are currently trying to do this now. Our bank wants to pull our US credit in order to finance us since we do not really have a credit history here yet. But we have been told by our employer that linking our US credit to Canadian credit is not a good idea as there is a lot of fraud here in Canada - so basically if you link your social security number to your Canadian credit and someone steals your info - they could have a hayday with both. Banks here though do go off your relationship that they have with you. So, if you have a hefty deposit, job, open a secured credit card, etc with them - they may be more likely to give you credit to buy a car. We are still trying to figure out what to do. If we cannot get a car loan here in Canada (as we also need to buy a second car soon), we are just going to purchase with cash, either here in Canada or in the US and just import it.

Good luck!