Very frequent traveler, US citizen/current resident married to Canadian

[bimmerm3m5]

There is a lot of great info on this forum, but I couldn't find any posts about my current situation.

I am [fairly] newly married to a Canadian (8 months). My job requires weekly travel to my US work location (flights I'd be doing even if being in the US). I have been using my NEXUS card for border crossings at YYZ (Pearson) for about a year now almost every week without issue.

From what I gather here, I should definitely apply "outside Canada" to avoid travel issues. I've also read that immigration will be able to look up my flights through the airlines - I don't keep my boarding passes but I do have email versions of the ticket invoices.

I'm sure it has been asked, but again couldn't find a whole lot of info: how BIG are peoples applications? I've seen monstrous folders worth of documents, but why would immigration want to read a book? For general questions, is a page or even a paragraph of explanation sufficient? I'm really referencing form IMM 5490 which goes into detail of a spousal relationship.

Thanks.

 

[parker24]

There is a lot of great info on this forum, but I couldn't find any posts about my current situation.

I am [fairly] newly married to a Canadian (8 months). My job requires weekly travel to my US work location (flights I'd be doing even if being in the US). I have been using my NEXUS card for border crossings at YYZ (Pearson) for about a year now almost every week without issue.

From what I gather here, I should definitely apply "outside Canada" to avoid travel issues. I've also read that immigration will be able to look up my flights through the airlines - I don't keep my boarding passes but I do have email versions of the ticket invoices.

I'm sure it has been asked, but again couldn't find a whole lot of info: how BIG are peoples applications? I've seen monstrous folders worth of documents, but why would immigration want to read a book? For general questions, is a page or even a paragraph of explanation sufficient? I'm really referencing form IMM 5490 which goes into detail of a spousal relationship.

Thanks.

I had two paragraphs for the details. Mine was about the size of a weight watchers cookbook (see below for photo of it). They really don't NEED a lot of paper, as simple as you can make it while being clear about your marriage/relationship is best

Welcome and good luck!!

 

[AllisonVSC]

Mine was about 200 pages in total.

 

[bimmerm3m5]

Mine was about 200 pages in total.

Wow, did you write up your entire life story?

 

[robrod]

You should take a look at the posting and pics of Irishimmigrant "whose biggest?" from a couple of years ago... He is the champ!.

 

[AllisonVSC]

No, actually. The explanation of our relationship was 1-2 pages including 8-9 photos. I also included about 9-10 emails (some were multiple pages), as many letters from friends and family, and 1-2 phone bills.

The rest was all the required stuff, application forms and stuff from the document checklists (passport pages, travel itineraries, divorce docs, etc). As I recall there were a lot of sponsor's pay stubs (something like 24 pages; we couldn't get them to print on 1 page), because we didn't have the CRA form initially.

I've been on the forum a couple years now. I would guess our application was well on the shorter side. Start to finish we were processed in less than 3 months in the conjugal partner category through Buffalo. There was a thread a while ago with photos of completed apps. Impressive sizes indeed. I have also heard of people who sent EVERY email, EVERY chat session, EVERY phone bill, etc.

 

[bimmerm3m5]

What you did sounds reasonable. I would think concise applications would be better than elaborate compilations. Thanks for the advice and now I need to get cracking!

 

[AllisonVSC]

Yes, I think concise is better too. Make it as easy as possible for the IO to find what they need. Good luck!