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Nine3001

Full Member
Mar 25, 2010
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125
Vancouver
Visa Office......
Vergreville
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Pre-Assessed..
Hello,

My husband (from Brazil) and I (Canadian Citizen) got married in Vancouver on January 16th and sent in the application for family class sponsorship inland on February 25th. My husband was currently on a 1 month study visa (which expired in October) and a 6 month visitor stamp (which expired this month.)

Around the end of November 2009, my husband filed an extension for his visa and for a work permit late because of a problem with the financial institution in Brazil, he was unable to obtain his financial records until the day he applied for the extension. He didn't realize at the time that he could submit the extension on time then send the information at a later date.

Anyway, he received a letter today regarding his extension, dated March 18th, stating that the extension was denied because he was late and that he was also determined to not be a genuine student as the letter he obtained from his school lacked credibility, therefore diminished the overall credibility of his whole submission.

We haven't heard anything from Immigration regarding the sponsorship we sent in February, and we are really worried right now, because the letter he received regarding his extension he filed prior to getting married stated that he must leave Canada immediately.

My question is - what should we do now? We did see an immigration lawyer prior to submitting the sponsorship application and he told us that once that is in, he is allowed to remain in Canada without status. Although, we didn't expect to get a letter saying he has to leave therefore we're really concerned that if he's been asked to leave, he'll have to leave regardless. We are planning to call Immigration as soon as we can (we received the letter outside of the calling hours today) and notify them of the sponsorship application and to ask what's our next step but any information I could get here would be extremely beneficial. Thank you.
 
Good news, we called immigration this afternoon and found out since there is a pending sponsorship/PR application he is allowed to stay and we can disregard the letter. Phew!

Though, the woman did say something about how he can restore his visitor status by paying $200. Does anyone know any information about this, and if so - is it beneficial or needed?
 
thats from CIC site:

"If your temporary resident status has expired, do not apply for an extension as you are not eligible. However, if you wish to stay in Canada after your status has expired you may apply for restoration of status within 90 days of your offence (loss of status) or you must leave Canada. If you wish to apply for restoration, complete the enclosed application providing full details of how you came to commit the offence. There is no guarantee that your application will be accepted. See the section Restoration of Status."

http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/information/applications/guides/5551E.asp
 
Nine3001 said:
Good news, we called immigration this afternoon and found out since there is a pending sponsorship/PR application he is allowed to stay and we can disregard the letter. Phew!

I'm sorry, I don't think that is true. Having an inland sponsorship application in process does not give him any sort of status, he is expected to maintain his status otherwise - study permit, work permit, visitor's status... He can still be approved for PR without having legal status in Canada, but the application itself will not give him any legal status.
Perhaps you either didn't explain clearly enough or you got a CIC agent that didn't quite know what they're talking about - unfortunately, it wouldn't be the first time to get wrong information from them. I'd suggest calling again and talking to someone else for confirmation. But last I heard, they didn't change this policy.

You will not hear anything about the PR application for another 4 or 5 months, so I'd suggest you get this sorted.
 
Right. The pending PR application doesn't give him permission to stay, but it does considerably help his chances of restoring his visitor status. As long as you've applied for restoration, he can stay until he gets an answer on that and you can wait for hopefully good news in the meantime.
 
How long does this process take? If they happen to deny this application, are their any other routes we can take in order to try to get him some form of status?

Also, would it be more beneficial to visit the local immigration office instead of calling the call center or mailing to submit this application or ask questions? We live pretty close to it.
 
You won't be able to extend his study permit, but you can apply to restore/extend the visitor status. As of March 15, they were starting to look at applications received up to January 17. See wait time upates here:
http://www.cic.gc.ca/English/information/times/canada/process-in.asp#temp_res

Send in a good explanation, because I don't really think there's any appeal or any other way to quickly get him status. It's processed in Vegreville, Alberta, so there's not much point visiting your local office. I think you can apply online on the CIC website. You can for extensions.