Hi all,
I'm a new PR in Canada (since April), and recently I married my husband in Edmonton, who is a Chinese national with a visitor visa to Canada and living outside Canada, in May, so I started to look at sponsoring him to come to Canada this morning and wanted to prepare some immigration documents in hope we can reunite as soon as possible... (Since we just spent two months together and getting married, it's sad to see him go on a business trip...) but found out that CIC is asking for some documents that we lack to prove our relationship...
We had some history going back.. we met in the summer in 2011 when he was 19 and I was 17 at that point. We were in a relationship for two months but broke up when I left China to study in Canada. We kept in touch, but not too much has happened. In the summer of 2017, we gradually found out we had similar interests again, and started chatting occasionally, then we looked at and thought about our relationship again seriously and decided to take it slowly in 2018. I was visiting him a lot and very frequently in Shanghai (April, May, June, July, September, November, and December) as he didn't have a visa to come visiting me in Canada yet in 2018. We got along well, visited each other's parents too, and decided to settle down seriously. We applied for his visitor visa in early 2019, so this year he came and visited me twice in February and April, and we stayed at my condo, visited a near by city just for fun, and got married in May in a small civil ceremony with three close friends. We are casual and not traditional, so we don't follow many customs. Comparing to buying expensive gifts, lavishing on ceremonies, we prefer to save the money for something bigger in life...
So far, to prove our relationship, we have
(1) marriage certificate from Alberta, but not in China, as I work and live in Canada
(2) wedding videos, wedding photos with one officiant and three close friends
(3) we have airline tickets booking confirmation, proof of travel, and my credit card bills to back them up
(4) my employment record and insurance benefits have his name as my dependent
(5) we have private messages with our friends congratulating us and praising us
(6) an email wedding invite
(7) receipt for wedding bands paid by my husband and pictures showing them to close friends
(8) small gifts we bought for each other (a ring for my birthday, a jersey for his birthday, we celebrated other occasions by me flying back to Shanghai, dining out, and staying at home peacefully)
(9) one flight record of us flying together visiting my hometown to meet my parents, another hotel record when we stayed together in Calgary
(10) Proof of contact since 2018 (from my side -- my husband doesn't delete chat history so he'll have more)
Since we don't live together or don't live in the same country we don't have joint accounts or property under both our names. We're private people, so we don't flaunt so much on social media or expose personal information. But we'd like to be with each other especially after spending so much time together in the past year, so we'd like to start the process as soon as possible.
However, I worry we don't have enough support documents to prove our relationship is genuine to the VO as we're not a typical young fashionable couple. Could you advise us please? Thank you.
I'm a new PR in Canada (since April), and recently I married my husband in Edmonton, who is a Chinese national with a visitor visa to Canada and living outside Canada, in May, so I started to look at sponsoring him to come to Canada this morning and wanted to prepare some immigration documents in hope we can reunite as soon as possible... (Since we just spent two months together and getting married, it's sad to see him go on a business trip...) but found out that CIC is asking for some documents that we lack to prove our relationship...
We had some history going back.. we met in the summer in 2011 when he was 19 and I was 17 at that point. We were in a relationship for two months but broke up when I left China to study in Canada. We kept in touch, but not too much has happened. In the summer of 2017, we gradually found out we had similar interests again, and started chatting occasionally, then we looked at and thought about our relationship again seriously and decided to take it slowly in 2018. I was visiting him a lot and very frequently in Shanghai (April, May, June, July, September, November, and December) as he didn't have a visa to come visiting me in Canada yet in 2018. We got along well, visited each other's parents too, and decided to settle down seriously. We applied for his visitor visa in early 2019, so this year he came and visited me twice in February and April, and we stayed at my condo, visited a near by city just for fun, and got married in May in a small civil ceremony with three close friends. We are casual and not traditional, so we don't follow many customs. Comparing to buying expensive gifts, lavishing on ceremonies, we prefer to save the money for something bigger in life...
So far, to prove our relationship, we have
(1) marriage certificate from Alberta, but not in China, as I work and live in Canada
(2) wedding videos, wedding photos with one officiant and three close friends
(3) we have airline tickets booking confirmation, proof of travel, and my credit card bills to back them up
(4) my employment record and insurance benefits have his name as my dependent
(5) we have private messages with our friends congratulating us and praising us
(6) an email wedding invite
(7) receipt for wedding bands paid by my husband and pictures showing them to close friends
(8) small gifts we bought for each other (a ring for my birthday, a jersey for his birthday, we celebrated other occasions by me flying back to Shanghai, dining out, and staying at home peacefully)
(9) one flight record of us flying together visiting my hometown to meet my parents, another hotel record when we stayed together in Calgary
(10) Proof of contact since 2018 (from my side -- my husband doesn't delete chat history so he'll have more)
Since we don't live together or don't live in the same country we don't have joint accounts or property under both our names. We're private people, so we don't flaunt so much on social media or expose personal information. But we'd like to be with each other especially after spending so much time together in the past year, so we'd like to start the process as soon as possible.
However, I worry we don't have enough support documents to prove our relationship is genuine to the VO as we're not a typical young fashionable couple. Could you advise us please? Thank you.
