already spoken to the lawyer...
A lawyer is a far BETTER source of information than I am. The difference is not even close.
Moreover, I have not been paying much attention to PR visa applications for many years.
That said . . .
Subsection 70(1)(b) of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Regulations states that “An officer shall
issue a permanent resident visa to a foreign national if, following an examination, it is established that the
foreign national is coming to Canada to establish permanent residence”.
I have seen this reason for refusing a sponsorship application, and relatively recently (I only saw it recently; but the case was back in 2019). It was set aside in an appeal. It was not set aside because it is not a legitimate qualification for a PR visa, or a legitimate reason for refusing the application. The prospective PR's intention to come to Canada to settle, that is to "
establish permanent residence" (meaning in fact, not as acquiring status), is indeed one of the specific findings a visa officer must make to issue the PR visa.
And the IAD acknowledged that based on the evidence before the visa officer, the refusal made sense.
But it was set aside because based on the facts in the case, in the de novo hearing before the IAD (that is, considering additional and new evidence presented), it was determined, by the IAD to not be a valid decision. That is, the IAD found the sponsored person had, as of the IAD hearing, presented sufficient evidence to show he intended to establish permanent residence in Canada.
Less than a month ago I quoted and discussed this case here:
https://www.canadavisa.com/canada-immigration-discussion-board/threads/who-accompanied-whom-can-matter-for-prs-living-with-citizen-spouse-abroad-update.579860/page-5 (I have also quoted the case quite often in totally different contexts, regarding credibility and decision-making, the IAD panel referring to another case and an applicant who purportedly "
was once a rake and a rambling man, not above a little fiddling on his income tax returns," but not so much so it warranted discounting his credibility in the immigration matter; I can be a bit of a softie for a clever phrase like that.)
The case is Elfadul, 2019 CanLII 145852,
https://canlii.ca/t/jdm4x
I do not know if the factual situation is at all similar to yours. That case involved a Canadian citizen applying to sponsor a spouse who was previously a PR but failing to meet the PR Residency Obligation renounced PR status, apparently to facilitate obtaining a TRV recognizing that PR status would be lost anyway. Then subsequently the Citizen spouse (albeit formerly a PR, and still a PR at the time of the initial sponsorship application) made the application to sponsor the spouse who had given up PR.
In its opening paragraph, the IAD stated:
Ikhlas Elhassan Ahmed Elfadul (“Appellant”) appeals under subsection 63(1) of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act (IRPA)[1] from the refusal of a permanent resident visa for her spouse, Adam Ibrahim Adam Mohamed (“Applicant”), by the immigration officer, because the officer was not satisfied that the Applicant would establish permanent residence in Canada as per s.70(1)(b) of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Regulations.
In that case an important fact was that the spouse being sponsored had already taken definitive steps to exit the country where he had been living and working for many years,
I have also seen other signs that IRCC is scrutinizing this element in eligibility more diligently.
I can only speculate about why, and I have my suspicions, but I do not really know.
MOSTLY RELY ON YOUR LAWYER . . . I am no expert, I am not a Canadian lawyer, not an immigration professional in any regards.
