Visa versions verified: Common-law conundrum capers

I just made my fourth call to Canadian Citizenship and Immigration to hone my understanding of the process and in seeking confirmation of what I understand about the process and the implications of my circumstances and choices.  Completely expectedly, the whole process is rather unwieldy and inscrutable, requiring many readings and re-readings of guides and documents and forms.  Ultimately I must build a pyramid at the base of which are all the individual actions and results that will support my application for permanent residency, like visiting a local police station to get a record of traffic convictions and infringements, going to Western Union Offices in Toronto in a failed attempt to wire money to an invalid recipient in Taiwan as payment for a police clearance, and buying a new red folder especially for housing the guides and forms and other components of the permanent residency application as it develops.  These individual actions form the base of the pyramid and support components a little higher up, for example, the receipt by me of an official police criminal record certificate that evidences my clean bill of good-citizenry health for the period that I lived in Taiwan.  A little further up are the larger stages and steps, such as submitting my complete application for the permanent residence and extending my tourist visa after the regular six month period has elapsed.  At the very top of the pyramid, closest to the heavens, is the penultimate event on which the entire campaign with CIC is built: the grant of a permanent residency visa for me, allowing me to come and go across Canada's borders as easily as a mosquito might cross the borders.  And then, like a mosquito, I can suck Canada's blood and potentially give it malaria.

Here is a summary of what I now understand about the process.

I can apply from outside or inside Canada for my permanent residency.
Both ways have two stages but the stages vary between inside and outside application.

Inside application: stage one - assess sponsor and applicant, 9 months; stage two - medical, security, background checks of applicant, 9 months; both stages @ Mississauga CIC office.
Outside application: stage one - assess sponsor, 45 working days, Mississauga CIC office; stage two - assess applicant, 8 months, done at relevant CIC office outside Canada (in my case, Sydney).

I want to be able to get part-time work while studying but I need a work permit or visa.  Outside Canada, I file an application for an open work permit with my application for PR and it should come through when my PR does.  I am not sure about this.  I think I can automatically work if I have a permanent visa.  So it would be about  months before I was able to get part-time work.

While my application for permanent residency is being assessed, I will be here on a temporary resident visa or tourist visa.  This is valid for me for 6 months.  It should expire before my PR is granted so I will apply for an extension and shouldn't have to leave the country or go anywhere.  It would be granted because of my common-law relationship and pending PR application.

After nine months when my PR is granted, it will be available from Sydney.  I would have to communicate with them about how to get it.  They might be able to mail it or I might be able to get it from the relevant embassy here in Canada OR I might have to go to Australia to pick it up.

Great.  Now I am more certain about what I am doing and how to do it.

Crisis in Canada: Chaos and Confusion

Well, once again I am surrounded by a cloud of uncertainty and difficult choices. It's stressful and it requires some deal of education and investigation before decisions can be made and actions taken.


Andrea will be studying at Lakehead University this coming semester. She will be studying for her postgraduate teaching qualification. That's fine for her but it leaves me standing in a pool of cold dilemma. I don't have a work permit for Canada and it may take up to nine months before I get one, at the same time that the first stage of my application for permanent residency is approved.  Nine months in Canada without working would be an awfully long time.  Sure, I have a full-time course of study of my own to pursue but I was really looking forward to being able to work part-time so that I could earn some money to put towards our living expenses and also because my course of study is completely online and I'm going to need ways of being involved in the local community.  I couldn't just study at home all the time; that would drive me crazy.  What am I going to do for nine months if I go and live with Andrea in Thunder Bay while she is slogging through her education qualification?  I could try to get some cash-in-hand work; I get the impression that I might be able to get a bit of that.  And I could also do some volunteer work and maybe set up a language exchange too, to practice my Chinese.

I need to recapitulate the progress that I made today.  I spent almost the whole day working towards making decisions about what to do about our recent change of plans and priorities.  Although I am ready to take a break from this behemoth of logistical challenges that has risen up from the circumstances that surround us, I need to pull together what I have learned and accomplished from the day.

Andrea is more or less committed to doing the course at Lakehead.  Wherever I am, I am going to be doing my online occupational health and safety course.  I want to be with Andrea (or at least I don't want to be separated from her for a long time) so I will need to be in Thunder bay with her.  I was really looking forward to getting a part-time job in Thunder Bay but it seems that I won't be able to legally work in Canada until the first stage of my application for permanent residency is approved and maybe until the second stage has also been approved.  The time for processing differs markedly between an application made in Canada and one made outside Canada.  There are two stages in the process of getting the spouse visa: Stage 1 involves assessment of the sponsor; Stage 2 involves assessment of the sponsored.  Completion of the first stage of processing takes 37 [working] days outside Canada but 9-10 months in Canada; completion of the second stage takes 7 months outside Canada but 9 months in Canada.  So in total, an application made outside Canada takes about 8-and-a-half months while making the application in Canada will take about 18 months, almost a year longer.  But work is a problem.  I can submit an application for a work permit with my application for permanent residence in Canada and I think it will come through when the first stage is complete.

I just realised two things while reading some of the guides.  The first stage of the application outside Canada is an assessment only of the sponsor.  The first stage of the application in Canada is an assessment of the sponsor and the sponsored which explains why it takes so much longer.  I don't know what the implications of this are.

The other thing I realised is that there is a difference between temporary residence permit and temporary residence visa.

I also made some phone calls about getting a refund on our plane tickets if we are not returning to Australia next month.  Expedia told me that because we has started to use the tickets I had to contact the relevant airline directly.  I called Air Canada and found out that our tickets are non-refundable although for a fee of $50 we can change the date up until three months from the date on which we first used the tickets.  So I can call them back and change the date of our return flights up to the second of August.

That's enough for today.