ameliax

Hi, hopefully somebody will be able to help me out here.

I have already lived in Canada for 1 year (IEC) and will be reapplying for this in 2014 (I'm back in the UK now as my visa expired in May).

On my return I plan to live with my boyfriend for the year so that we can qualify for the common-law sponsorship (we got together in my first year of me being there but weren't ever living together). I understand that now there is a requirement of living with your partner for two years once your application has been accepted and this is where I may run into problems. He will potentially be going into the military at the end of 2014 OR going back to grad school which would mean that we may not be able to be living together full time - of course we would try to be together as much as possible, but with military training and wherever his base would be, this could be difficult.

Are there any workarounds for this, or is it set in stone that you MUST be living together for the whole two years? If anybody has any information that would be great, or could point me in another direction?

Thanks

Aviator

Having the same primary residence and joint bills and accounts should be OK. 'Living together' is in a husband/wife like relationship. Him being away on military service won't affect you. After training he could apply for married quarters.

ameliax

Thanks for the quick response, your info has been really helpful. I was worrying for the longest time that the two year requirement would make it impossible.

I guess the other question that I have is, what if his military training were to take place before we had lived together for the year which leads up to applying for the common-law sponsorship? Or is the 'living together' again like a husband/wife situation, so as long as we still had a joint account/paying bills etc this would be okay?

Siouxie

Hi and welcome to BE!

Unfortunately, in order to be able to apply for common-law sponsorship you must have lived together continuously - with no breaks - for a period of a minimum of 12 months.

The requirement with regards to the conditional PR is that you must remain together for 2 years after you have 'landed', not from when you applied or received approval.

ameliax

Oh, I see. Hmm, that could be a problem. I'm not too sure what you mean by 'landed' either, sorry, do you mean once I have arrived in Canada and we begin the one year living together? Does this mean that one year out of the two years for the conditional PR is already included in the one year we would have lived together, or is this an extra two years after the application has been approved?

(my apologies if this isn't making sense, I'm feeling confused by the situation atm).

Oaken

It's basically saying that once accepted and in Canada you have to stay with your partner and not leave him once you have the visa it's just to stop marriages of conveniences that's all .

SchnookoLoly

IN a nutshell, the process will go like this:

1) You live together for 12 months, unbroken, in order to qualify as common-law. During this 12 month period you can have short absences (generally less than one week) for business or personal travel, but anything longer than that and you risk not qualifying as common-law to CIC.

2) Once you pass the 12 month mark, you file your application for sponsorship. If you apply outland, this takes an average of 6-7 months (see the spreadsheet linked in my signature).

3) The application process has two stages: Stage 1, sponsor approval, which is where CIC says that the Canadian is eligible to sponsor the non-Canadian, and Stage 2, which is the assessment of the non-Canadian for Permanent Residency (PR).

4) Assuming both Stage 1 and Stage 2 are successful, the non-Canadian will receive a form from CIC called Confirmation of Permanent Residency, or COPR. This form says that Canada has accepted the non-Canadian to be a PR, but the non-Canadian is not yet officially a PR. The COPR will have an expiry date on it, which will be 1 year from when the medicals were done, or the non-Canadian's passport expiry date, whichever comes first.

5) In order to become PR, you have to physically cross the Canadian border, which is called 'landing'. You show up at the Canadian border with your COPR, and you'll be processed at that point. Once you cross the border you officially become a PR.

6) Two "clocks" start ticking the moment you land: 1, the two-year requirement to remain living together (basically so CIC knows it isn't a sham arrangement solely for the purposes of gaining PR status), and 2, the 2-in-5 year residency requirement to maintain PR status.

Hopefully that makes more sense... this is all explained very clearly in the Wiki.

Aviator

This may not be a problem with serving military. If you both have ownership/tenancy of the home and bills, bank accounts in joint names and he has to travel for work, then should be no issue. To be safe you could always get married.

ameliax

Thank you for all of that information, it's much appreciated ^

I would however like some more clarification if possible on what I feel to be the main issue.... As I mentioned, there is a chance that my boyfriend could be going into the military at some point and if we were able to successfully live together for twelve months so that we could apply for the sponsorship, it is the part where we'd have to be 'living together' for two years that could become an issue as I mentioned earlier, he wouldn't be sure where he'd be based for training and if he'd be deployed.

Aviator kindly provided me with advice that the military option shouldn't prove a problem for the two year living together part. I wouldn't want to put my boyfriend into a position where he would have to potentially delay his enrolment for three years +. Is anybody else able to agree with this point? (I'm not saying it's false information, I just know that sometimes things aren't as clear as they seem)