Needing advice-- outland, or inland, etc?!

[lacimf]

Hi, all!

This is my first post here, so I'm gonna give a small bit of background. My fiancé and I met online 5 years ago, I live in South Carolina - USA and he lives in Toronto, Ontario. We're looking to get married this summer. We're having a wedding mid May, where we're not actually signing papers. I'm planning on driving up in July to be with him. Our quandary right now is - do we do a courthouse wedding (aka the paperwork, 'real' wedding) in May down here in the USA or do we wait until July to do it in Toronto? What's going to be better for our visa, what would the border be more keen to?

And second set of questions: I cannot find it anywhere, and this may be painfully obvious. What's the difference between inland and outland? Because I thought outland meant living outside of Canada but there's plenty of folks who still live inside Canada while processing outland. Are there pros & cons to both?

I mainly would love advice/answers to the first set. We're really struggling with the whole actual marriage part to start with - much less all this other visa junk. Sigh. Any help would be fantastic. Thanks so much!

 

[canadausa#11]

Whatever you do, as an American applicant apply outland. And yes you can be in Canada as a visitor and do that.

 

[bluecanary]

Whatever you do, as an American applicant apply outland. And yes you can be in Canada as a visitor and do that.

I still have a ways to go before I can get close to applying, but I can attest that outland>>>inland, especially for US/CAN couples just from reading this board.

Inland apps are alluring because you have the ability to work while waiting for the app to process, however, processing time for inland takes like 2 years, whereas outland is roughly 6-10 months, from what I can see.

 

[Aquakitty]

The border doesn't care where you get married. The downside to marrying in Ontario is I think it takes a really long time to get your marriage certificate, which you need for the PR application. The other thing you should note is it takes 14 weeks to get your FBI police check, so plan accordingly.

There is no downside to applying outland as an American. Some people get lured in by the work permit you can get with an inland application. But, a work permit takes at least 4 months to get, and some Americans are getting their actual PR in under 4 months. As the others said, don't apply inland.