Hi all,

I arrived here on a work permit with the family, the permit is valid for 3 years but the intention is to stay for good and apply for citizenship 3 years from now.

Is there any way to gain landed status before this ? I tried to phone the CIC phoneline but I always get booted out as it is too busy.
What about becoming a permanent resident, when can I apply for that and how much would it cost, and could my family stay if only I registered as a PR?

Sorry for all the questions, but CIC is no help at all !
And their website says their new call centre in Montreal will allow them to handle more calls...........I would have hated to try the old system as it's been 5 days now and I can't even get in the queue !!

Thanks

Garry

Sorry to rain on your parade, but IIRC you have to have been a PR (not a temp resident) for three years before applying for Citizenship, which then takes at least a year to do from start to finish. Even if you can do Citizenship as a temp resident, it would still leave you without status for a year, and your family would then have to be sponsored by you after that, so a further delay for them.

If you are here on a work permit, you are already landed, but you need to apply for PR status, through Bufallo NY. In my case this took about a year.

If I were you I would apply for PR after your first year, for you and your family, or better still persued your employer to do it. It took me about a year to go from EA to PR after being on the work permit for a couple of years. My company paid in order to avoid constant EA extension applications, so cant help WRT cost.

Lots of info in the misc.immigration.canada group (canadian immigration forum)

Good Luck

Iain

i don't think there is any need to wait a year until you apply, if you are sure about it now. we were here about 6 months before applying last february to Buffalo (which we are still waiting for). i'm not sure why you wouldn't apply for your family at the same time if it is going to take a while to obtain.

Time on a work permit counts at half-rate and even thhen only to a max of one year towards your three years residencey needed for citizenship. In other words, two years here counts as one towards yourt total but after that you need to get full PR to chalk up the rest of what you need.

Remember that for citizenship application every single day spent ouitside Canada, for whatever reason, comes off the time in the bank so if you leave Canada for a couple of weeks each year for three years then you have to have been here for three years plus three times two weeks before applying for citizenship.