Hi all. my wife and I are at the start of the immigration journey, and just looking for some guidance on certain things, in terms of the best way to structure our application. I am the CDN, and she is the US citizen. I expect to be on these forums quite a bit.
We are in something of a more complex scenario, for many reasons.
Despite being a CDN and US citizen, we had an arranged marriage. This means that we had EXTREMELY limited contact upto our wedding day. This I understand to be an issue in terms of proving the legitimacy of the marriage, especially given that we are applying after being married less than 2years. What can we do NOW to help address this? Is this a major problem in the first place?
The next thing is in terms of her current status here. For reasons I wont get into, we were not legally married at the time of her crossing into Canada in mid-October 2015. We did not get legally married until after we got back to Toronto where we live now. At the border (we flew in from Houston) she listed herself as visiting until early January. She was not questioned what so ever at the airport/border. I dont know if that was the correct way to do it. Is there something we should get (record of landing), that will help us in anyway?
The record of landing appears to be useful in applying for different things. For example, my wife is a licensed pharmacist from Texas. Registering here and getting licensed requires a record of landing in lieu of a COPR or valid permit. However, I recall that getting one, or trying to can make the application process more difficult but its been a while since ive seen that. Speaking of being a pharmacist, i dont suppose that helps the application in any way? I also imagine that applying under those experience classes also likely wouldnt make sense.
The other reason I ask about some kind of visitor documentation is that we'd like to go on a honeymoon in late December. I was very worried getting her through the border the first time, and am worried about future issues. Is a record of landing or some other visitor visa document something we can or should get? The plan is to go for a week in December, which is a few days before we said she would be leaving from Canada. Is going in the first place a bad idea? I figure the pictures can help our application....
I believe outland application is the way to go as she is a US citizen and should result in faster processing time? 6-10 months apparently, which is not too bad...but I guess considering that I need a few months to even get the documents together (like the FBI check) it will likely be around a year...
Im sure i have more questions but this is what I have so far.