So I’m a Canadian citizen and passport holder and I immigrated here over 2.5 decades ago same as my partner. I met my partner 5 years ago and we been common law partners for last 3.5 years. Now I have many homes and good jobs/ business everything but my wife is suffering. She moved here from the Philippines over 2.6 decades ago with her parents but she apparently had some fight with family when she was 19 and ran away to a different province and lost her record of landing and Filipino passport on the transit bus while asleep along with other luggage. She apparently never filed a police report nor called cic or IRCC about it as she didn’t know any better. Our original province was BC. In 2020 I bought a home and business in Saskatchewan and when we moved there, my wife couldn’t obtain SK drivers license or SK health card because she couldn’t prove her Canadian status. So after 8 months of haggling, we had to move back to BC as my wife has multiple disabilities also and healthcare was costing me an arm and leg. In 2021, we applied to an immigration law firm based in Richmond bc and after paying so much fees and 1 year later, we managed to get something called a verification of status COPR document for her from IRCC. Great right? Well that’s what we thought. In 2022, we moved to the kootenays BC and bought another home there and both of us had great jobs and we were doing ok. Now few months ago this year in 2023, we decided to make Edmonton, alberta home and I got a great job and business here. So we have rented out our bc home and moved out here 2 months ago, bought a home here and I managed to change all my IDS to BC but when it came to my wife’s turn, the same headache as we had in SK again!! None of the alberta registries will accept a COPR VOS document from IRCC as valid document of her Canadian status. I have gone to service alberta website and it clearly states that they do but the registry agents don’t. We went to IRCC downtown and they even told us that she has a valid legal Canadian permanent resident document but again the registry agents keep saying it’s not valid. We are stuck. She cannot get her drivers license or health card or library card here. It’s a big hindrance for me too as mentally I’m not able to do my job or business in peace and losing sleep over it thinking we need to wrap up and go back to bc again where she has a drivers license and health card already and bc just keeps renewing it automatically every year for her since she applied for those when she was much younger with her parents and still had her passport and record of landing back then. Not sure what to do. Me having to change jobs again and give up my home here if my wife doesn’t succeed is going to affect me financially and credit wise a lot. Please can someone here give us some advise or clues.
My common law partner needs some serious help please
- Thread starter mybusiness2005
- Start date
Have considered to apply to replace permanent resident card? She can use police report with incident numbers for the documents that she can not provide, such as copy of lost passport...Not sure if this answer your wife's situation..
Has she not attempted to secure a passport as well? Has she been reaching out to the Philippine embassy? As already mentioned why did you not apply for a PR card just a VOS and COPR?
Bit of a strange story that. In many aspects, none of which are germane to providing an answer.
I can see a few avenues, but my present choice would be a complaint to the Alberta Ombudsman. Happily, unlike the silly over-PC province of BC, they still call it "Ombudsman" as did BC when I had some dealings with that august body. None of this inane "Ombudsperson" nonsense. So, in Alberta, it might actually remain useful. Here is a link:
https://www.ombudsman.ab.ca/
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