my daughter from my first marriage

[radi1968]

hi all
thanks in advance for all your help and advices.
have a question pls. i applied for immigration when i was married to my ex-wife yr 2000 . have two daughters with her.
life happens and before our visa we got divorced and she refused to let my daughters do the medical tests fearing that i might take them with me.
during that time canadian embassy asked me to sign a paper that i will never sponsor my daughters to canada.
now am canadian citizen my question is can my daughters apply for cadian citizenship /passport now or not.
pls advise

 

[SinghLovCan]

Since they made you sign a paper that you will not be able to sponsor them. I guess you can't... but I do believe there might be special circumstances under which you might be able to sponsor your daughter. You should talk to a lawyer.

 

[alphazip]

now am canadian citizen my question is can my daughters apply for cadian citizenship /passport now or not.
pls advise

I believe that your question is: now that you are a Canadian citizen, does that make your daughters Canadian? The answer is no. For them to be Canadian citizens, they would have had to have been born AFTER you became a Canadian citizen.

 

[toshib]

For your daughters to be Canadians they should have permanent residence and live in Canada for three out of four years, as they were born before you became Canadian so they are not eligible for Canadian citizenship by descent .Also you cant sponsor them anymore as you signed a paper before in the embassy.

 

[eileenf]

If the dependent is not [fully] examined at the time of the sponsor immigrating, that dependent is banned from ever being sponsored to Canada by the family member. I suspect that this was the gist of the document that the Embassy had you sign; that it was an acknowledgement of your future inability to sponsor your daughters, rather than a promise not to do so. The ban was not the Embassy's decision, it's Canadian law under the Immigration & Refugee Protection Act (IRPA). I personally don't fully understand the reasoning for the ban and I'm sorry that it's in place. If you wish you talk to an attorney or settlement worker, you definitely could and should. Let us know what they say.

Below is information excerpted from the Canadian Centre for Refugees, who have been advocating to greater flexibility and judicial oversight of this issue:

"The Immigration and Refugee Protection Act Regulation 117(9)(d) imposes a lifetime ban on sponsorship of a family member, if the family member was not examined by an immigration officer when the sponsor immigrated to Canada...The immigration regulations state that a person is not a family member if they were not examined by a visa officer when the person trying to sponsor them immigrated to Canada. This applies to any family member, including the sponsor's spouse, common law partner or child. Since the person is deemed not to be a family member, they can never be sponsored, leaving some families forever unable to reunite."

PDF with info on this can be viewed here: http://ccrweb.ca/en/families-never-be-united-excluded-family-members-profiles