paul..

I have been here in Canada since December 2010, living with my Canadian fiance. In may I applied to extend my visitor status until the end of this year. The extension has just arrived in the mail, which is great.

We recently married and now we are having to wait for our marriage certificate so that I can get my PR application sent off. I will need to extend my stay again as the time will have elapsed before we get the initial approval that the PR application will be processed.

Is it wise to use this reason for an extension of visa or not. Also my wife is pregnant and the baby is due on June 1st. Could we use this reason too?

Any help would be much appreciated.
Paul

BTJ

If you wait until end of December before you send off a paper application for visitor extension it currently takes 142 days to process, so even if denied you would get 142 days into 2012. I don't know the processing time for spousal PR, but might this be sufficient regardless of the outcome of the extension?

BrennaBoo

We had applied for a resoration - bit different from another extension but to give us a bit more time as we mucked up the first extension - we had to apply for a restoration - while wiating the response of that my husband recieved his PR in canada - and landed in september - they still had not even LOOKED at the restoration application - just last week - we recieved a cheque in the mail REFUNDING us for the application for the restoration - 200 dollars back from the government as there was no need to process his resoration application - he is now a OR. The Paper applicaitons can take a very long time to process - we did ours paper to give us that extra time - no problems at the border either when my husband landed.

Good luck!

Siouxie

There is no need to wait for the official registration of marriage certificate - send in the application for PR together with a copy of the certificate issued at the time of marriage (and all your other supporting documentation) and state that you will send in the official registration document when it comes through. That will save you 2.5 months!

As previously stated, apply for an extention so that it arrives a couple of days before your current one runs out, the chances are your PR will come through before the extention. As to reasons, put down that you have an application for PR in place, that your wife is expecting but that you understand that should the extention be denied you will leave Canada if requested to do so. Enclose a copy of your PR fee receipt marked "COPY PR APPLICATION RECEIPT, FOR INFORMATION ONLY" so that they don't confuse it with your extension application fee receipt, this will show proof that you have an application in place.

The last extention I applied for I was given a year as I had a PR app in place, though you need to make sure you request 12 months on the extention application.

Worked for me