So confused!!!!

[ShellyG]

oK.. So let me get this straight.... My boyfriend, who lives in Brampton cannot sponsor me, a New Yorker, unless we've lived together for a certain amount of time, can prove that we're an actual "couple" by means of photo's, credit card receipts, cards and emails ( which we have, but geesh, do I really want the world to read THOSE?? ) My big question is this......how do I move to Canada and work there?? I'm not a "skilled worker", I'm a photographer. So I don't think I can get a work visa....I HAVE to work, but can't work in Canada unless we get married right away? So can I live in Canada and commute to the states and work every day? It's not that far, after all... and hour and a half tops! Is that even possible...legally, I mean.... Yes we are in a serious relationship, but do we want to get married RIGHT NOW??????? No, but we would like to live together.....so how the heck do I actually go about this?? Oh, and his divorce will be finalized in December...he can't sponsor me until it's final, right?

Oh my head.

 

[Leon]

If you want to live together and both continue to work, then I guess you have to commute. If you don't have to work, you can go stay on a tourist visa for up to 6 months.

I am pretty sure he can not sponsor you until he's divorced. After all, you are not allowed to have more than one wife in Canada.

As for proving your relationship to immigration, it's not really for the world to see, just immigration. They will not post all your stuff on their website or anything like that.

 

[ShellyG]

Thanks! I appreciate all of the advice / info I can get!

 

[RobsLuv]

Actually, a couple can be common-law partners under the law even when one (or both) is married to someone else, but in order to qualify as common-law partners, you have to have lived together for at least one year. What you're proposing to do is risky for a number of reasons - and I know because I was in the same situation, except that I didn't need to work so I wasn't trying to travel back and forth everyday.

I came to Canada from the US, planning to marry my fiance within a couple of months. But his ex held their divorce hostage, and after waiting 22 months without being able to marry, we "qualified" as common-law partners. So we were going to file that way - but I'd been in Canada only as a visitor. I hadn't overstayed because we frequently left Canada together to travel, and I was always allowed to re-enter, but I had no "legal" status as far as a work permit or anything. I was simply a visitor - and on one trip back from the States, I was refused entry to Canada. The IO claimed that we didn't qualify as common-law partners because I had not "lived" in Canada - in other words, we couldn't establish a common-law relationship by "visiting". She specifically said that a common-law relationship must have been already established (elsewhere) or, for it to be established in Canada, I would have had to have been in Canada with legal status (like a work or study permit). She was very specific that I was not allowed to come into Canada and stay in order to qualify as a common-law partner (even though that had never been our intention). Regardless, she said I wasn't eligible to be sponsored for permanent status and she not only refused me entry, she excluded me from Canada until we could prove we'd gotten married. She said I had "misrepresented" myself every time I entered Canada, and she really threw the book at me. We were lucky, the divorce was (finally) almost done, and we were only separated for 3 months.

But this illustrates another aspect to the risk you're taking in having to travel back and forth over that border in order to keep working. Eventually they're going to clue into the fact that you're "going home" to Canada every night - and you're going to get pulled into secondary for interrogation. If you mention a bf in Canada, or that you're living together so you can qualify to be sponsored as a common-law partner, they WILL throw the book at you and exclude you (or even ban you) from Canada. Believe me, it's not worth the risk.

You're only an hour and a half apart - we lived 3000 miles away from each other. Keep up with the visits - but maintain separate residences until you decide you're ready to marry. Canada is not interested in facilitating a couple's desire to be together without benefit of marriage or a previously established common-law relationship. That's why there's no fiance visa anymore Section 5.46 of the OP2 Processing manual says:

CIC decided that it no longer wanted to be in the business of assessing future relationships or the intention of two individuals to establish and maintain a conjugal relationship. Thus, there is no fiancé(e) category in the IRPA and Regulations. If they intend to apply as spouses, Canadians and their foreign national fiancé(e)s are expected to be married before the immigration process takes place, i.e., the foreign national must be married to the Canadian sponsor and apply to immigrate as a married spouse.