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Please help me .scared to apply for inland

Underhill

Hero Member
Feb 5, 2020
312
186
Vancouver, BC
What seems to be the issue?
Managed to read the OP before they edited it. Basically, it's someone on a student visa that quit school (or was kicked out due to failing grades), and has been in Canada without status since 2017. Apparently OP got married a month ago in Canada to someone with status of some sort and wanting the know the risks of filing for inland spousal sponsorship.

Seemed like a hot mess way beyond my pay grade, so I moved on without responding.
 
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Honeyrana48

Member
Feb 16, 2022
19
5
To apply for spouse sponsorship you have to have a legal status in canada, without that I don’t think he is able to apply for it. But he can apply for refugee but he will need a good lawyer for that. It is a hot mess, be responsible if you want to stay in canada.
 

armoured

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Feb 1, 2015
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To apply for spouse sponsorship you have to have a legal status in canada, without that I don’t think he is able to apply for it.
Not true: https://www.cicnews.com/2021/03/canada-accepts-spousal-or-common-law-sponsorship-applications-from-out-of-status-foreign-nationals-0317365.html

Beyond that I do not know this well. I believe that having a sponsorship in process does not completely protect one from being removed, and since out of status not eligible for the open work permit of an inland application, in my view only makes sense to apply 'outland' (even though physically in Canada).

Common sense is that a spousal sponsorship of someone out of status is going to get more scrutiny as to the genuineness of the relationship.

But apart from knowing that yes, someone out of status can be sponsored, also a bit beyond my comfort areas here.
 

scylla

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To apply for spouse sponsorship you have to have a legal status in canada, without that I don’t think he is able to apply for it.
This isn't true at all. You can apply without status. Lots of people here have done this successfully.
 

Ponga

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Oct 22, 2013
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Obviously the spouse that has `status of some sort' needs to have Permanent Resident status (at least) to be able to sponsor the OP.

Regarding an out of status applicant:
[source] https://www.canada.ca/content/dam/ircc/migration/ircc/english/resources/manuals/ip/ip08-eng.pdf
(last update May 5, 2015)

12 Legal temporary resident status in Canada
Subsection (R124 (b)) of the Regulations require that the applicant have temporary legal status in Canada to be eligible for processing as a member of the Spouse or Common-law Partner in Canada class. However, under the spousal public policy (Appendix A), persons who are otherwise eligible for consideration under this class, in that they meet the R124 (a) and R124(c) requirements, (and who are not inadmissible for reasons other than “lack of status” as described in Appendix A), may have the legal status requirement waived.

There was (and still may be) an administrative policy at CBSA regarding a person in Canada without status that has submitted an Inland Spousal Sponsorship application that usually allowed that person to remain in Canada during the application being processed, but it was NOT a guarantee. Once the applicant received AIP (Approval in Principle) it was then a guarantee.

Also, once a person without status did reach the AIP stage, they were eligible for an Open Work Permit. Not sure if this has changed.

IMPORTANT: Once a person has received notice that they must attend a pre-removal interview, they are no longer eligible for the administrative deferral.

More info, here:
https://www.cba.org/CMSPages/GetFile.aspx?guid=54a0297b-effa-411f-80af-6261cda4c15a
 
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armoured

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Feb 1, 2015
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I find it interesting that the sources cited by armoured and Ponga as support for the view that out of status persons may be sponsored suggest that this is a change of fairly recent origin.

I know from experience that this was being allowed as early as 2003.
I looked again at the article I found - from this perspective the content is entirely neutral as to when this was adopted as policy, although text talks about covid stuff (really just meaning 'more people got stuck.').

So I think this is just internet-search-availability-syndrome - clickbait stuff dated recently comes up more easily.

I had no idea when the actual policy was adopted, so thanks for the info.
 

Ponga

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Oct 22, 2013
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I find it interesting that the sources cited by armoured and Ponga as support for the view that out of status persons may be sponsored suggest that this is a change of fairly recent origin.

I know from experience that this was being allowed as early as 2003. My wife came to Canada in 2002 under a class of visa that no longer exists. She was given 3 months and we extended by 3 months. She then ended up having to stay due to injuries precluding a return home. She was given a 3-month extension on compassionate grounds. We were married in Canada in 2003, about one month after that extension expired. I thought there was no need to seek a further extension, since we were getting married and we would start the sponsorship application (which in those days was filed first, before the permanent residence application).

The IRCC saw things differently. They said, sorry, she had lost status by the time you applied, so she must now return to her home country and apply from there. I tried arguing, tried involving my MP, all to no avail. We were about to move back to her country (I had been living there anyway before 2002), when the law - or at least the policy - changed. She was allowed to stay pending a decision on sponsorship/permanent residence, despite her lack of status.
Could you provide a link to that law/policy and when it was actually implemented?

The information that I provided was from May of 2015. I was not implying that prior to that time a similar policy was or was not in place. FWIW, the CBSA Administrative Policy was NEVER a guarantee that a person with a submitted Inland Spousal Sponsorship application would not be removed prior to reaching the AIP stage.
 

Ponga

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I am sorry, but I lack the time to undertake on your behalf the historical research requested, so I can provide no link as requested, assuming such even exists.

I did not say that you implied anything at all. I said "the sources cited by armoured and Ponga" did carry that implication. You would seem to agree, saying that your source was from May 2015, which I noticed, and which caused me to comment as I did.

Whether you choose to accept my word or not, a matter of no concern to me, I recall most vividly what my wife and I went through in 2003/2004.
Wow...my bad for not expanding upon the first sentence in my previous post. I was merely hoping to educate myself, not doubt the validity of what you were saying. My apologies.