Canadian Immigration

Grifter

I've been looking into this quite a bit but I'm hoping that somebody here might have some better information than I've been able to find.

I have dual citizen ship of Bermudian and Canadian. I lost my job in Bermuda a while back and we decided to leave Bermuda to find a job in Canada. I came up here on my own and managed to find a job and got a lease on an apartment without issue. That was back in February.

My wife and dog joined me a few months later. She's a US citizen and we've been married for over three years. Apparently, that doesn't mean that she just gets to walk into the country. There's a bunch of paperwork that needs to happen. We've been trying to get the application documents together but some of them have taken time. For instance, we had to get an FBI background check, which didn't cost very much but took a couple of months to arrive. Problem that we've found now is that the background check is over three months old and we have to apply for them again. My wife hasn't been working for a few months now and we both have some debt that I'm not going to be able to cover with just my pay check.

What is the quickest way to get her the ability to work in Canada? We're at the point right now where we're thinking she'll have to move in with her parents in St. Louis so that she can work and pay off her student loans. According to the information online it could take a year and a half for the paperwork to go through. I really don't want to have to live separately from my wife for a year and a half.

Dr. Frenchenstein

Can she get a work visa? i know they have those in the US. I'm not sure about the details on how to go about that though.

I know i got the third degree when i went up to canada for some meetings with my old job. They seemed very keen to find out if i was coming up to canada to steal their jerbs. Some questions i was asked: Why are you coming to canada, why can't a canadian do this (i could understand if it were construction, or whatever. These were MEETINGS...), etc etc. didn't exactly make me fall in love with Canada.

Entriech

So I'm a Canadian who has managed to successfully import their U.S. wife, and have acquired Citizenship for her as well.

The thing that you'll be chasing down is permanent residency. When we went through that process it took us about six months all told from submitting our application to her landing as an immigrant at the Canadian border. Seeing as you've been married for three years, you shouldn't have any issues successfully doing that. Once she has that, she'll be able to live and work in Canada.

In the interim, if she wants to be employed at all up here, she'll need to find a job where they are willing to sponsor her work permit in order for her to be officially employed in Canada. It's not impossible, but unless she's got some sort of skilled trade to ply it might be fairly difficult. The other alternative is of course some sort of off the books work, but I wouldn't recommend that. If it was discovered, she could be deported, and it could negatively influence her ability to enter the country/attain permanent residency/citizenship.

Her living in St. Louis may be the best option for you right now, if you both definitely need to be working.

Also if she is living up here right now, remember that most governmental services will not be free for her, such as healthcare. Although our prices up here tend to be pretty reasonable by comparison to the U.S. When my wife was up here visiting me and we had to hit the ER, they charged us 300$ or so.

Also as a visitor she is only allowed to stay in the country for a certain amount of time (I think it's six months). At that point, she will need to depart the country. Some people try to get around this by "lapping the flag pole" at the border, but I don't recommend that either, as if she's caught it'll basically ruin her chances of getting permanent residency. You can however talk to Canadian border services and have a longer visa filled out for her, especially after you've applied for permanent residency.

Our timeline went something like, we applied for PR in February, then in April my wife moved up here, and we got a 1 year visa at the border with our proof that we'd applied for PR. Then in August we had to go to Buffalo, and that finished off the PR process.

If you have any further questions or just want a sympathetic ear, don't hesitate to send me a PM. It's a pain in the ass process to go through, but it does work, eventually.

Grifter

Yeah, that's basically what my understanding of the situation is. However, looking at the timelines leads me to believe that we're looking at 18 months for an outland application. I just can't afford to have her not working for that amount of time. She has too much in student and credit card debt for me to cover on top of our regular bills. And we don't really have a huge amount in bills, to be honest. She just keeps on taking the dog into the vet for one thing or another and that soaks up $500 a trip, which is basically what I have budgeted for savings per month.

Thing that just hit was that her FBI and Bermuda Police background checks just expired the three month period and now we have to get new ones before we can submit the package, finally.

I'm just incredibly annoyed that I'm most likely going to be separated from my wife for at least six months if not over a year.

cmsamo

I can't comment on your specific situation but in my own case, I applied for Canadian citizenship, and was told at the point of application it would take 12-18 months, but that I could submit a letter outlining my personal circumstances. I wrote that my common law wife (based on time spent together) was back in Canada, and I had a job lined up, and was asked to start within 6 months of the application date. I sent the letter along with my application. I received paperwork back stating that the letter had been received and considered, but that I should still prepare for a 12-18 month wait.

I got my citizenship and passport less than 3 months later. FYI I applied to the Canadian High Consulate in London, England... which is apparently a reasonably busy office.

Write a covering letter with the mitigating circumstances. Also, apply to an office with a light workload. The time your application takes is directly proportional to the office at which you apply....