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Skilled spouse not sure about the best way to get a PR: skilled worker or wife?

Balia

Newbie
May 23, 2011
3
0
Hi Everybody.

I am Senegalese woman and am married to a Canadian Citizen who lives in Montreal. I am currently in Dakar where I work. I am not very sure which route to take in order to enable a speedy processing of my PR. I am tired of the back and forth with my tourist visa and would like to settle to Montreal sooner rather than later. My questions are the following:
1. I qualify for both spousal application and Federal Skilled Worker (FSW) program. If I decide to go through the FSW, won\\\'t the Canadian immigration services require that I submit a spousal application, thus letting my status of spouse prevail over that of skilled worker? Are they in a position to oblige me to choose the spousal route or is that option entirely up to me?
2. I have been told by a lawyer that applying to PR as a FSW is much quicker (2 years of processing he said: 1 year for the Certificat de Selection du Quebec and 1 year for federal approval), in my case, than applying as a spouse (more than two years according to him). I am kind of confused as this is not the type of information I have been reading on this forum as it seems that spousal applications are processed relatively fast and certainly faster than FSW it seems. Could you please clarify that to me: which is one processed quicker between FSW and Spousal? Do you have an idea of the time it takes? Does the estimated timing that my lawyer gave us seem excessively long to you? Could the fact that I am Senegalese justifies these long delays in processing my PR vs say a EUropean or a US-Citizen applying to the same?

Thanks a lot for your help and looking forward to reading from you.

Balia