Urgent!! Pls help

[Brad999]

Hi to all!
Need help - hope you can help me.

My fiancee is a usa citizen , Im in Canada as a tourist , our wedding is on July 4th in Canada-- all set and we want to stay here for now.
Yesterday my fiancee try to cross the border into Canada by land with her car and she had bunch of gifts from the bridal party and someone told her to say that she is a seasonal residence and she will not asked to pay taxes ( so stupid right??? Its gifts! )
So she did it , they asked her to show apt lease contract , and we have one on our both names on a year start July 27 , the officer asked her - when you will leave Canada ? She said few monthes , the officer told her that she is laying ans he doesnt want her in Canada without a work permit and he said he typed on their program that no one should let her pass the border again without a work permit and he sent her back to usa.

We are so down and dont know what to do , we dont have money for lawyers and dont have wxperience with the law . Pls any comment or suggestions will help . Thank you so much

 

[Bs65]

So just to clarify you are in Canada as a tourist your fiancee was attempting to enter Canada as a tourist, you have a 12 month lease on an apartment in US or Canada.? If the latter would you not think that appears odd to CBSA given both tourists and not allowed to work in Canada so implying planning to stay post wedding with no ties back the US such as work or residence in the US or your home country ?

As tourists whilst you could get married in Canada you would have no residence rights in Canada so not sure why you could expect to stay in Canada beyond any time allocated to a tourist if thats what you mean by stay for now.

In hindsight lesson learnt though dont listen to anyone else who did this or that crossing the border make your own decisions based on facts.

Not an easy position to be in but was your fiancee given any option to appeal or was just an outright refusal to enter plus assume was offered the voluntary withdraw application to enter option.

 

[scylla]

I'm a bit confused too. Are you both American? How long have you been in Canada? And on what basis (i.e. just as regular tourists or are you under some kind of work permit)?

Regardless, your fiancee is only allowed to visit Canada - not live here. Unfortunately it's not that surprising she was refused entry given she was behaving more as a resident than visitor (the one year lease certain wouldn't have helped matters - visitors don't have one year leases, this is something residents do). If she wanted to remain in Canada, she should have stayed away from border crossings. However what's done is done.

Your options at this point are extremely limited. She can try another border crossing in a few days (make sure she doesn't take the stuff she bought with her this time). Most likely she'll be refused again since the earlier refusal is now on her record - however there's always some chance she might be allowed in. Make sure she doesn't argue with the CBSA officials at the border. She should just accept whatever happens. Note that if the CBSA official she is dealing with is extremely displeased with what she's trying to do, there's always some chance she may be issued a 1 year exclusion order from entering Canada (this doesn't happen often to Americans - but it does happen). She obviously wants to avoid ending up in this situation.

If she's refused entry again, you'll unfortunately need to forget about having your wedding in Canada on July 4th.

There's nothing a lawyer could do to change this situation.