Aperture

My partner and I have recently applied for his Canadian PR via the outland common-law route whilst living in Canada. (I am Canadian, he is British.) Given the timeline on the CIC website, we expect to hear about Part 1 approval in the next couple of weeks and my partner will hopefully have PR by early spring 2012.

Though we had submitted our application with the intention of staying in Canada for at least a couple more years (despite having a rough time of it here for a variety of reasons), a recent holiday in the UK has tipped the scale in the other direction and we're now thinking about moving back to the UK as early as summer 2012.

It seems to me worthwhile for him to just get his Canadian PR anyway in case we decide to move back (again!) in a few years or even a few decades. But is this change of intention a legal problem? If we are allowing the PR application to continue moving through the channels while also intending to move to the UK (and applying for my UK common-law visa), will we have done something wrong? Should we withdraw the Canadian PR application? The last thing we want to do is officially (or unofficially) anger immigration authorities on either side.

The problem is, of course, that we still need a few months to research the UK side of things--it may not turn out to be a good choice for us after all. If so, we'll be kicking ourselves if we will have already withdrawn the Canadian PR application.

Anyone know the legal issues surrounding this before I call CIC and try to get an answer?

el_richo

Continue with the PR process. Don't worry about it.

Aperture

That sounds good! Do you think it's still worth asking CIC or can I relax? (I'm really worried about me or my partner ending up with some kind of black mark on our immigration records.)

el_richo

I'd relax if i were you. Continue with the process as you meant to.