Hello,
I need some help with the IMM5768 forum. I moved to Canada with my employer from overseas and my offer letter had an annual income of 120K Canadian however because i moved in Aug 2018 i only have an income of 47K in my T4. Is it possible to include my offer letter? or my income outside Canada? my bank statement or funds that i had in Canada to help get to the minimum?
my income for 2019, 2020 and 2021 is way above minimum however the are asking for 2018, 2019 & 2020 only.
Any suggestion or help is welcomed. Thank you
Hi,
I don't have any experience with this, so all I can tell you is what I found by looking into the official guidance for IRCC officers.
In particular, look at "Reassessment of financial circumstances" here (
https://www.canada.ca/en/immigration-refugees-citizenship/corporate/publications-manuals/operational-bulletins-manuals/permanent-residence/non-economic-classes/family-class-assessing-sponsor.html#finReassess ) and section 134(2) here:
https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/regulations/SOR-2002-227/page-19.html#docCont
It looks like the rule is that they look at the three taxation years preceding the date of your application, and only take into account income - foreign or Canadian - that is declared to the CRA and appears on a notice of assessment. There's no way around the fact that you need to submit information from these three years.
If at least 12 months have elapsed since your application was filed, then according to the regulation the officer examining your application *may* request updated information, in which case the calculation shifts forward by a year, which would be perfect for you.
The operational manual I linked to above says this: "A sponsor’s income can be reassessed prior to an initial recommendation being rendered on sponsorship eligibility, where information material to a sponsor’s ability to meet financial requirements is received by IRCC."
So it looks like it's not compulsory for them to ask for updated information, and they can only do it in certain circumstances even if they want to.
It looks like a lot depends on their discretion here, and you might want to consult a lawyer about how you can make a case to them that they *should* exercise their discretion to allow you to use 2021. The main points would probably be that the only reason you don't meet the requirement for 2018 is that you weren't yet in Canada for much of the year, and you've met the threshold by a very wide margin since then.
Honestly, I have no idea if IRCC would actually help people in these situations, or if the updated information is only ever requested when they think your income has decreased and they're looking for a way to reject your application.
You might meet requirements by moving to Quebec (if you care enough about this to leave a 120K job). This is especially true if you have high net assets, as Quebec counts these.
