Amclon said:
Hi an HNY
We will be travelling to Canada next week to activate our residency and get our PR cards, but given the short timeframe we are obliged to return to Belgium after a few months in order to finish things before our full immigration to Montréal.
Given this, how should we proceed with the Good's list knowing that whatever we will enter with (our luggage) we will take back with us and we do not as yet know any details on shipping the rest of our goods at this time.
Can we enter as tourists while still activating our permanent residency?
I see a few instances of people that did this... how did it work?
Thanks for any insights,
Overall, your plan is a common one.
You should be able to get better, more thorough responses to queries about the process of landing, and bringing goods, in the conference here with topics specifically about immigrating to Canada. This part of the forum, this conference, is specifically about PR obligations and thus mostly about issues and procedures affecting those who have already landed.
No, you cannot enter as tourists while at the same time activating your PR status.
If you come to Canada and go through the process of landing, you will become a Permanent Resident of Canada as of that date. You will no longer be able to enter Canada with any other status than that of a PR. Moreover, after that date you will need a PR card to board a flight to Canada. Thus, while your plan is a common one, remember that you will need to be in Canada long enough to obtain the PR card (which will require giving a Canadian residence address at the time of landing) or to plan on obtaining a PR Travel Document before you can again board a flight to Canada from abroad. (Your visa-exempt passport will no longer work for boarding a flight to Canada.)
Reminder: it can take several weeks, even more than a month, and sometimes longer, to obtain the PR card after landing. And, again, one needs to have a place of residence address in order to have IRCC send them a PR card.
Regarding importing personal effects LATER:
I offer the following with the caveat that I have not kept current with the procedure involved in actually landing and becoming a PR, my understanding relative to importing one's personal property is that the process remains largely unchanged even though the specific forms used have changed.
Generally, at the time of landing you must declare all personal effects, "goods," which you will import to Canada as part of your immigration to Canada. These can be items which will not be sent to Canada until later.
Basically you need to decide what items
you own and personally use (not items to be purchased or otherwise obtained after landing) you
might bring to Canada, and list those as "goods to follow."
You may already be familiar with the applicable forms for importing your personal effects, which I believe are respectively titled "Personal Effects Accounting Document" and "Personal Effects Accounting Document (list of good imported)." These forms provide for declaring "Goods to follow."
The procedure is to complete these forms
before or, at the latest, at the time of arrival at the PoE when going through the landing process. The latter is not a good idea, at least for anyone who has a lengthy list of goods being imported, and especially for anyone who is listing items as
goods to follow. (Many PRs complete two copies of the "list of goods imported" form, one listing goods brought at the time of landing and the other a list of goods to follow.)
Thus, use the appropriate forms to list all the items you will eventually be bringing to Canada, as
goods to follow, and you can then later ship or bring these items to Canada when you are ready to actually settle in Canada.
If your question is about how to go about this if you have not yet decided what personal effects you intend to import into Canada, to bring with you to Canada, the best I can offer is that you can list everything you own right up to the point of making the trip to land in Canada, and which you might possibly be bringing with you. If you subsequently bring only a portion of these items, no big deal.
My understanding is that the immigrant must own and personally use the items to be imported, as the personal effects of a settler, before immigrating to Canada.
Perhaps, if you remain abroad more than a year from the date of landing, you could then import your personal effects as a former resident returning to Canada, but these would nonetheless still be limited to items you owned and used, and indeed I believe there is a six month time of ownership and use requirement (meaning you must have owned and been using these items for at least six months prior to the return to Canada).
