Mark Holthe 0:05
ANNOUNCER. This episode of the Canadian immigration podcast is sponsored by the Canadian immigration Institute, one of the best sources of video content on Canadian immigration to help you navigate your way through the Canadian immigration process. Head on over to the YouTube channel, where there's tons of video content, and you can join mark yes myself in a number of live video streams, Q and A's all designed to help you navigate your way through this crazy Canadian immigration process. When you're done there, like and subscribe and then head on over to the Canadian Immigration institute.com where you can find all those awesome DIY courses that I've been talking about. Thank you, Canadian immigration Institute. You are the sponsor of this amazing little podcast. You
Speaker 1 1:05
i The Canadian immigration process can be complex and frustrating with the Canadian Immigration Department making it virtually impossible to speak to an officer. There are few places to turn to for trusted information. The Canadian immigration podcast was created to fill this void by offering the latest on immigration law, policy and practice. Please welcome ex immigration officer and Canadian immigration lawyer Mark Holthe as he is joined by industry leaders across Canada sharing insight to help you along your way.
Mark Holthe 1:51
Welcome back everyone to another episode of the Canadian immigration podcast. My name is Mark Holthe, and I'm here with my co host, Alicia Bachman Beharry, how are you? Alicia,
Alicia Backman-Beharry 2:01
I'm doing well. Mark, and I wanted to do a podcast on spousal and dependent children open work permits, because this is one of the kind of few rays of light that people still have when they're looking at do you actually have an open work permit option. And I think sometimes we forget about it. It's one of those things that has been in existence for a couple of years, but maybe people didn't really pay much attention to it. And knock on wood, it hasn't been revoked yet.
Mark Holthe 2:33
Yeah, it's been around for a while. And if we look back over here, Alicia at the public policy here, this was originally announced back in February of 2023 and we'll talk about this a little bit more. But as you think about all of these programs, the only policies we've seen right now are ones that are being shut down or canceled or closed just with the government's tremendous effort to reduce the number of temporary residents in Canada. And I was just reading this morning the submission put forward by Sela to the government, just on the more Cavalier they are, process they're using to refuse temporary resident applications without, really, you know, any meaningful adjudication of these. And we're happy to see that, you know these work permits, and you know, if there are refusals, they are now, including, to some extent, the GCMS notes, but they really contain no substantive information which says that they're not really entertaining or examining the evidence and giving any form of an individualized assessment based on the individual's actual background. So yes, applying, especially outside of Canada, although we are starting to see a little things to happen, you know, a little more strict interpretation from within Canada as well. But this policy, like you've indicated, is somewhat of a ray of light. And so why don't we just dive in? Because there is a little bit of confusion about it. But first thing I want to talk about Alicia is who can apply now, those of you who are listening, you can easily go to our website, Holthe immigration law. [email protected]'s and go to our blog section, and on September 11, just a week ago, Alicia released an awesome blog post that covers a lot of the content we're going to be talking about today, but let's start off right from the beginning. So who can apply Alicia?
Alicia Backman-Beharry 4:33
So it's important to keep in mind that we're not talking about work permit holders and spouses of temporary foreign students. We're not talking about PGWP holders. We are only talking about people who have filed a spousal sponsorship application for permanent residency. That's it. And there are, of course, two different categories of spousal sponsorship, and sometimes people don't realize this. I get a lot of questions. About this. So I wanted to start off with, okay, what is the difference between a spouse or common law partner class, and what is the difference between a family class under Division One of the immigration and refugee regulations? So this is really important because we have what's commonly known as a inside Canada spousal sponsorship, and that's the sclp, and then we have the Family Class application, which was historically known as the outside Canada sponsorship class. Now the reason that it makes a difference is because under the Family Class application, people actually have a right of appeal to the immigration appeal division. So Family Class right of appeal right now processing times, right? If we look at the processing times for a family class application, as of last week, they were 13 months. If we look at the processing time for a spouse or common law partner inside Canada class, it's like 36 months. So a huge difference in processing time. And then the other fantastic thing about the family class application is that you theoretically can leave an exit, enter and exit Canada. So the problem with the spouse or common law partner in Canada class is that if you file from inside Canada and you leave Canada, there is a possible and they changed it so the processing time has actually gone up since last Thursday. Wow, 15
Mark Holthe 6:23
months. Yeah, it's not surprising. Alicia, it's not. We're just those of you who are watching the video of our podcast. I'm just showing right now as of September the second. I said it said it was last updated September the second. But I don't know if I buy that, because I looked at it and it was 13 last week. But anyways, it says now 15 months processing for an in for an outside Canada, and, oh, you know, and, but understand, these are global averages. So it is possible some regions, we could see things move forward a little bit quicker. But yes, this is constantly changing.
Alicia Backman-Beharry 6:58
So still, though you can and maybe look up the outside Canada, or, sorry, inside Canada processing times for SCL, CP, and see if those have bumped up as well. Because it's
Mark Holthe 7:09
interesting. Yeah, I just pulled that up. It's sitting at 23 months has actually come down. Yeah. So, isn't that weird? So, so guys, this was like we were over. Were we? Were we ever at 30? We were, we're over 30, like 32 I think, and then now it's 10 months, it's dropped 36 like, three years, like, it's just, I don't know, I'm trying to trust this Alicia, but you know, even this September the second, we're recording today, September the 17th, and I'm positive that this was, I looked last year, sorry, last week, Just last week, and we were over 30. So you take this with a grain of salt and you try to plan accordingly, but the gap between the two is starting to narrow. Interesting,
Alicia Backman-Beharry 7:51
yeah, so we'll see about the processing times. For the last while, it has been basically double for the inside Canada. And people say, Well, why is that? Well, because the rationale from IRCC is spouses are together. They're reunited. They're in Canada. They're hanging out. They're doing whatever they need to do until they hopefully get their PR so that's the justification for it. The interesting thing is that historically, if you filed a Family Class application, you were not eligible for an open work permit Period, end of story. So the other interesting wrinkle is that, and this is what people often do not realize, you can file a Family Class application if you are physically present in Canada, if you have status. And so technically, you're under the Family Class category, but you there's nothing in the definition that requires you to be physically outside of Canada. So you could, theoretically, if you had a valid visitor visa or your ETA or Visa exempt, you could be inside Canada and you might file. And where you make that determination is when you check off your document checklist when you're filing that document. So keep in mind, when we're looking at this public policy, the important change has been that as of February 9, 2023, this was when Minister Frazier was still here. He said, You know what, we are going to allow open work permits for Family Class applicants if they meet a number of requirements, and this is going to apply for spouses who are sponsored, and it's also going to apply for their dependent children who are part of that sponsorship, who are accompanying family members. So that's a really important shift, because it actually gives a lifeline to people who are in Canada who actually decided to file under the Family class so that they could preserve their appeal rights, they can get, hopefully, faster processing times, and they could leave and exit, exit and re enter Canada if they need to, because the risk under a spouse or common law partner class is, if you leave, you might lose your application. And so if you file. Under the Family Class, you have a little bit more. You can hedge your bets a bit more. Gotcha.
Mark Holthe 10:06
And, you know, realistically, Alicia, when you look at this, you know, on the surface, it sounds Hey, great. You can include dependents. But remember, you know, how often do you have married, a married couple, or a common law couple, that are, you know, a Canadian sponsoring their their spouse, or permanent resident sponsoring their foreign spouse, who has a child that they themselves, is between, you know, the age of 18 to, you know, 21 or, I don't know if there's a an age that's below that, it's just, just adult 18 to 21 I think, is the range, right? Once you hit 22 you're no longer dependent, I think, is that the same definition,
Alicia Backman-Beharry 10:45
there's no there's no restriction, like, if you have a 17 year old and you wanted to get a work permit for them, and they were eligible to work in the province, and you're meeting the minimum age requirements under employment standards, you could apply for a work permit for that person. Okay, you're right. They have to be the dependent child who is an accompanying family member under that spousal sponsorship. The other thing that will go through the IRCC interpretation as well, but it's buried. It's not in the IRCC interpretation. It's actually only in the temporary public policy. There's a maximum duration on that, and so when you are making the request, you can't ask for more than two years. If you ask for more than two years, you're going to fall outside of the temporary public policy. So pro tip, make sure that you don't ask for more than two years. So that's where it is. It's right in that temporary public policy. And it says that when you are asking for a maximum of two years, it's sub i, i, so the next thing is, all right, who's going to be eligible? Let's, let's kind of dig down into the details of this public policy and how IRCC is interpreting it. So the foreign national has to be the principal applicant, so and they have to be under either a spouse or common law partner sponsorship, or under a Family Class sponsorship. And IRCC has had to actually accept that sponsorship for meeting completeness under regulation 10 and under the ministerial instructions that say that it requires a complete package. According to the website, all the checklists requirements are there as well.
Mark Holthe 12:25
And so, Alicia, how do you know that? So how does someone know that they've reached this stage?
Alicia Backman-Beharry 12:32
Yeah. And so historically, IRCC has said, Well, that means there's a genuine relationship, and the sponsor has received an acknowledgement of receipt or approval in principle. And we'll get into when you need an approval in principle versus when you need an AOR, because those are very different things. So this is how they tell you that you have passed kind of this first completeness check, acknowledgement of receipt, or in some cases, you got to go further down the road for approval in principle. And we'll get into that in a second. But the next thing is, if you filed that spousal and you have that AOR, most of the time, it's just the AOR, then you also have to submit a separate work permit application and mark you. And I remember way back in the good
Mark Holthe 13:17
old days, the good old days, yes, indeed,
Alicia Backman-Beharry 13:21
the good old days when you could file a spousal and you could file an open spousal work permit all in the same package, Off it goes, and you're good. No longer right. So they changed that, and
Mark Holthe 13:32
that was so good, Alicia, like when I, when I think about in, you know, in those days, it was often a situation where people would be running out of time on their work permits, right, and then they would, we would, you know, they'd be eligible to file a spousal sponsorship, so we would file that, and we would include an open work permit at the same time, which would then allow them to benefit from maintained status and not be in a situation where they, you know, are going to fall Out of status. But now it becomes really precarious, because individuals are having to wait this extra time. And there was a period of time where it was three or four months before you got it back, and people were falling out of status. And so, you know, it creates another level of complexity that I know from an operational standpoint. IRCC just wanted to separate them out so that they could have them process through different units and not have to manually separate them themselves when they receive spousal sponsorship. It's all about efficiency. But my goodness, Alicia, when they had those discussions, processing times were like 12 months, you know. And that was across the board. And now, well, as we talked about it, they're, they're climbing and jumping up and dropping down,
Alicia Backman-Beharry 14:46
yeah, and that's exactly why I wanted to write this article and have this podcast mark, because I think it's really important for couples to realize, if you are in Canada, you're falling out of status soon. You really, really have to think ahead for. File that spousal sponsorship, wait for the AOR, then you have to do a separate work permit application. So that's kind of procedurally what has to happen. And there's time you got to build in time for all of that. So the next part of eligibility criteria is that you actually have filed a separate work permit application. And there's a particular way you have to file it, which is what this article that I'm writing is all about. Not only that, the spousal sponsorship has to have been submitted by a Canadian citizen or a Canadian permanent resident, if you're looking at a situation where they are residing in Canada, a common law or a conjugal partner. And keep in mind, you can't do a conjugal partner sponsorship. If it's an in Canada application, it has to be a family class application for conjugal so the next eligibility criteria is that they have to live at the same address, so you can't make use of this temporary public policy if you happen to be living at different addresses. So important to remember. And then the other thing is that, and this is where it gets tricky, the foreign national spouse must have a valid temporary resident status in Canada or be eligible for and have applied for restoration of status.
Mark Holthe 16:14
So in practice, this restoration period allows for a small grace period. So if someone's work permit, once again is expiring, and you file this spousal sponsorship as quick as you can, and then you're waiting and it expires, then the question becomes, do I should I have submitted a temporary resident visa application and then a work permit, which is probably what we recommend, because we don't want people to fall out of status. But does this policy allow you, Alicia, if you have filed a temporary resident visa, applicable, I should say a visitor via visitor record application. Does that mess things up if you then want to apply through this policy? So you know, because it says valid temporary residence status. It doesn't say valid work permit. And so, you know, we don't, you know, we typically don't counsel people to fall out of status. But if, for whatever reason, it did, then what this is saying is you have up to 90 days for that restoration period to to submit this.
Alicia Backman-Beharry 17:19
Yeah, and then we'll also get into another wrinkle below, if you don't have AOR, right? And then we'll also get into another wrinkle of there's another temporary public policy that's been in effect for a number of years, about if you're doing a spousally and you've already fallen out of status, but in that case, if you've already fallen out of status, you're outside of your restoration period of 90 days, then you have to do a paper application, and then you have to wait for approval and principal. So we will, we'll go through that. Keep in mind, just like we said, it also applies for dependent children who are included as accompanying family members, but it doesn't as often occur just because of the practicalities of it. I want to make sure that people understand there are certain circumstances where you cannot apply for this temporary public policy open work permit. So if you had your spousal sponsorship refused, like it didn't pass the completeness check, or it was withdrawn, or it was returned. I have had a number of consults where people said, Oh, my goodness, my spousal sponsorship was returned to me. Literally, Mark because there was one check box on their document checklist that wasn't checked.
Mark Holthe 18:29
A check box on the document checklist. So what if the check box on their document checklist was something that didn't apply to them? There isn't a way to write na on, you know, the secure PDF form. So what do you do? Alicia, in that situation,
Alicia Backman-Beharry 18:46
I normally go in with a PDF writer and put NA next to them. Yeah. And
Mark Holthe 18:51
that's a pro tip. That's a pro tip you guys. So ultimately, with the document checklist, you can technically print them and write hand write in not applicable on the sections that don't apply to you, because there's a lot that that may not but you definitely don't want to leave any spaces blank, and that's absurd. Alicia, they returned the whole spousal sponsorship. Or was it a different application? It was a spousal because they didn't check off, like civil status documents or something on the document checklist, even though they provided them, they just didn't check the box it.
Alicia Backman-Beharry 19:27
Well, it was a use of rap situation where IRCC said a use of rep had to be included, and they were like, No, a use of rep doesn't have to be included.
Mark Holthe 19:35
So, yuck. Well, it's messy regardless.
Alicia Backman-Beharry 19:39
Yeah. So the other thing, you cannot apply at the port of entry. Do not go down in flagpole and ever try to use this public policy. It does not apply. You will not be accepted. You will get all sorts of grief at the border. Don't do it, yeah.
Mark Holthe 19:53
So also, also, and that's also another recent change, because it wasn't like this before. Either you could go down, and when individuals were trying to get a work permit sooner, they would, that's what they would do, and that's a good point. So if we go here and just look, because this is another factor people have to take into consideration, the processing times for work permits right now from within Canada are 100 and oh my goodness, they're back up again, 191 days. So, yeah, just six and a half months, yeah? So even with this policy, yeah, it's really, really painful, really painful, because not many people are think that far in advance with their status, especially if they came as visitors here, right? So you're still waiting six, yeah, over six months to process in most cases,
Alicia Backman-Beharry 20:44
yeah, and that's important mark, because there might be circumstances where you are a spouse in Canada with a valid work permit, and you're just doing a change of conditions to a new spousal open work permit, in which case, if you file it before your initial work permit expires and everything else applies, you would have implied or maintained status to continue to work, but you're absolutely right. Mark, if you're just here as a visitor, and you've never had a work permit, and you just file the spousal sponsorship, and you then you apply for the work permit, you cannot start working yet. You have to wait until you actually get that work permit sent to you and you have it in hand before you can actually start working.
Mark Holthe 21:22
Mark, yeah, all right. So, so what if you don't have an AOR Alicia?
Alicia Backman-Beharry 21:27
And so this is interesting. There's, this is not in the temporary public policy itself. It is in the interpretation from IRCC. And so the nice thing, like this is a little, I don't know, olive branch that IRCC is reaching out to people who are right about to expire. And so it's pretty interesting, but they allow an exception to the rule that you normally need, an AOR. And so if you are applying for an open work permit and the foreign national spouse currently has a work permit, a study permit or visitor status that is about to expire in two weeks or less, and the spouse or common law partner category, class or family class, application has been submitted and the person still has status, then you can do this kind of little Hail Mary pass where you say, please accept my application For the open spousal work permit under this temporary public policy, even though I don't have AOR, because my current documents about to expire in two weeks. Yeah.
Mark Holthe 22:31
And here's the question here, so for main steps to apply, this is the actual government website. So those who are watching, who are listening, you can, you can, kind of all try to walk you through. It says how to apply. Do you have a valid temporary resident status? We say yes. Then says, Okay, you can apply for an open work permit. Once you get your AOR, you can apply for open work open work permit. You must apply online through the secure account. And then talks about this policy. Alicia is addressing who's eligible to apply for work permit without an AOR. So your work permit is will expire in less than two weeks, and you've applied through one of the programs. So this is, this is kind of the olive branch, like Alicia said, that does technically allow us, to some extent, to you know, to make this request sooner. So, yeah, you still have to have applied, yeah,
Alicia Backman-Beharry 23:27
yeah, yeah. The spousal sponsorship has to have been filed, and you have to know this wrinkle exists in order to make use of it, because you only have a two week window. So this is, this is why I wanted to bring some more attention to this category. And then the next thing is, is that, just like you said, Mark, it has to be through the secure account. Cannot go down to the border. It has to be an online application. They give you specific program guidance about what you have to put when you are actually filling out that 5710 or the application to change conditions, what has to be written in each of those job title boxes. Make sure that you're properly putting that in there. Otherwise they're not going to flag it under the temporary public policy and you have to upload all those supporting documents. It's not going to cue you to do this. You have to know that you have to either provide the AOR and your current valid permit or and proof you submitted the spousal the marriage certificate. Stat, DEC, if it's common law union, if you've got kids, you've got to do the birth certificate, all forms showing dual intent, all documents showing dual intent. And if you are trying to make use of that two week rule, then you have to show you filed the spousal you have to, like, get screenshots and fee payment receipts, because you won't have the AOR, right? So you've got to have a stronger documentary. Know how to make sure you put everything in there properly,
Mark Holthe 24:51
yeah. And the hard part Alicia is that for people who are just applying on their own, you have to really dig to find this information, like if someone. It, like lots of times, people just zip through this stuff, and they don't even, you know, they don't even pay attention, like they they just jump through it, and then they get down to the bottom, and they advance to the next screen. And like they don't, they don't really carefully review these detailed things, especially how to fill out the application forms. And so, like Alicia pointed out, if you're not answering the proper thing in the proper box, remember, it's electronically, like whatever version of AI scrubbing it, looking for that those specific codes that they have here. And if you don't put it, I wonder if you, if you put it in lower case, if it's even case sensitive, you know, ultimately, if it says, Write, sclp, C, F, C, O, W, P, in the job title box. And I'm going to put it exactly as it is asking here all caps. So these little nuances can literally make the difference between acceptance and rejection. Because if you don't do this, they're not going to know for sure what type of open work permit you're applying for. And you know, obviously you want to provide your proof that your application has been submitted. So there's so many areas where this can drop off, so many areas where you can, you can make mistakes that cause your application to be rejected. And the moment it's rejected, Alicia, you're outside of the maintained world. You're back into this crazy situation where, yeah, you might be able to restore your status, but you're waiting over six months for it to be processed. Who can just sit around and not work for six months? I know I can't,
Alicia Backman-Beharry 26:30
and that's why, hopefully you filed under the Family Class, and if you had status, then you can go and you can come back and work outside Canada, and then come back, hopefully so. But all these things matter, all these details matter, which is why I'm going through them, why we're talking about them today and trying to highlight them, because it makes a huge difference in people's lives.
Mark Holthe 26:51
You bet. Okay, so the second, and I guess the final little piece is when you when you don't have status, then how does this play out for you? Kind of hinted at it, but it's important to know for people who whatever decision, you know, they got some advice, just stay. I'm not going home, you know, I've got nothing to lose. I'm staying. I'm choosing to stay here without authorization. And then they find their true love, and then they decide to file a spousal sponsorship. And this is where the policy kicks in. And you guys can go back through our YouTube channel. You can look, look back to past blog posts like we've talked about the public policy for spouses. And essentially, what it does is it, you know, it defers removal of someone from immigration if they have an in Canada spousal sponsorship application filed. And it also has the ability to kind of save someone who's been out of status in Canada. But everything has to line up, and more so than ever before, IRCC is adjudicating these things just with a strict, strict interpretation. They're not giving people benefit of the doubt. So yeah,
Alicia Backman-Beharry 27:59
yeah. And the where you can find this, if you actually take want to take a look at what that other public policy is, is if you flip back mark to the IRCC guidance, and you actually take a look way down at the bottom of the page, and just like you said, it's buried, so it's hard to see. So if you go down to the bottom of this page, and it says, How do you apply? And it says if you don't have status. So if you click the sorry, scroll up a little bit to whether you do or do not have status. Keep going up. Keep going up, and you're going to have to say, instead of I have status, you say, No, I don't have status. A little bit right here, right there, right there. So if you don't have temporary valid status. You look here, and this is going to link you to the other spousal public policy, and this is under Section 825, so the agency sections of IRPA that talks about, just like you said, in some circumstances, they will save the ability for married or common law partners to advance a spousal sponsorship, even if the foreign national spouse does not have status has fallen out of status. So this is an old public policy. Yeah,
Mark Holthe 29:12
it is. I remember Alicia. I guess that's kind of fun to add some interesting anecdotes, but I remember when this policy was created. And so basically it stems from, it's always political. And I remember Minister scro. Judy scro was the minister, our liberal immigration minister. And at the time, there was no policy that prevented CBSA from removing individuals from Canada, even if they were the subject of a spouse, and in Canada, spouse, common law partner application, they said, well, it's not a hardship, just we're not going to approve your visitor extension and and so you have to go home. And so there was a Romanian lady who was a exotic dancer, and they, they called it stripper gate. But anyway, she was an exotic dance. Officer who married a Canadian, and, you know, she didn't want to live that lifestyle anymore, I guess, and and so she wasn't working, so she couldn't maintain her work permit. And so they transitioned to her visitor status, and they tried to apply to extend it, and it wasn't approved. And so the recourse back then was a temporary resident permit. And you know, the minister has the authority to issue those. They used to be called ministers permits, but the temporary resident permit, they have the authority to issue it. And so they applied for one, and it was approved. And I think that was the right decision to make. But the problem was, she was volunteering a little bit on the campaign of Minister scro Mr. Scroll probably didn't even know her hardly, right? And but at the same time, the media gets a hold of it, the opposition party gets a hold of it. Then it became this big thing, like favoritism for people who are, you know, working on your campaign. And so at the end of the day, sometimes good things come from, from, you know, tough situations. And so in this case, the public said, yeah, like, there's, there should be a re like, we shouldn't be removing these people who are in genuine relationships with their Canadian spouse, if one of the pillars of the immigration refugee protection act is the reunification of families, well, why would we be sending them home? And so this policy was created, and I think it's a good policy. And it allows individuals who, even those that have fallen out of status, to to be able to stay and until the decision is made on their applications. And and, yeah, I think it's, I think it's a good policy,
Alicia Backman-Beharry 31:34
yeah. And it prevents people from, just like you said Mark, having to file a TRP. And you, you know, the IRCC does not want to be inundated with TRP applications, so when they're looking at genuine spousal so it has passed kind of that completeness check, and there's nothing saying that it's a marriage of convenience when you're at that stage. Well, then let's use the public policy. Let's keep people in status, let's allow them to apply for a work permit. So that's the rationale. And so if we circle back to the second scenario, where most of the time it's going to be where the foreign national spouse has valid temporary status, and keep in mind that could be a work permit, it could be a study permit, or it could be visitor status. If you don't have valid status, and you're outside of those 90 day restoration periods, then you can still apply if you did file your spouse or common law partner or FC one application under that old temporary public policy but, but you cannot apply online. You have to apply on paper. And the difficulty with this is you cannot just have AOR. You actually have to have your approval and principle. And I will reiterate this, approval and principle is not the same as your acknowledgement of receipt. So acknowledgement of receipt is normally coming pretty quickly. These days, I think most of my spousal applicants have received their AOR around a month or so, yeah, pretty quickly after they filed, maybe about a month approval, and principal is much further down the line. So that's when they've actually assessed the sponsor, made sure that the sponsor is eligible. And then they assess the foreign national applicant, make sure they're admissible. And there's nothing saying that, you know, they think it's flagged for a marriage of convenience, then they will give you this approval and principle letter. And so, you know, if you are under a situation where you fell out of status, you filed under the old public policy, and you're really stuck, you might be able to use this. You got to apply on paper, and you have to have your approval in principle.
Mark Holthe 33:41
Yeah, exactly. All right, we are pretty much at the tail end here, getting it right the first time.
Alicia Backman-Beharry 33:51
Alicia, yeah, and this is where, just like you said, Mark, there's so many things that if you don't follow these instructions, if you don't understand how to structure this application if you don't provide IRCC absolutely everything that they need upfront to approve your application, the processing times are so long that if something goes wrong, you're probably landing in a really tough spot. So it's just important to get it right the first time. So make sure that you've done your due diligence. I would recommend on these that you hire an immigration lawyer to help you with the process, because if you need to work, and it's important and you, especially if you had a prior work permit, you need to make sure you do have maintained or implied status, make sure that you're going through all the details.
Mark Holthe 34:36
Yeah, it's interesting Alicia, as the government has taken the steps that they have to this point to make it just so miserable for applicants. I think, you know, we've never been more busy, at least I haven't in my entire career. The reality is, people are recognizing now that there isn't room for any mistakes, and that those mistakes can have catastrophic. Consequences, and you may never get a second chance to fix things. You know, for a lot of people, a lot of families, especially with these spousal sponsorships, finances are a big issue. And so they say, Well, okay, it's, it's not cheap, you know, hiring you and your firm mark, you know, I you know, we could save those 1000s of dollars filing it on our own until you get a refusal. And the moment the refusal comes through, it delays everything. Maybe your work permit then expires, and if the person being sponsored is the principal applicant, which I've seen, then that person is not eligible to work. And then, when we're looking at six months processing of a work permit, well, how much does a person earn in six months? And that's the equation that I help people look at, you know, when they're trying to decide whether or not to retain us. But I filed more spousal sponsorships in this last year than probably the previous 10 or 15. It's unbelievable the volumes and people are looking for whatever avenue they can to be able to stay and this is something else. Maybe I'll point it to Alicia. Never before have I seen IRCC questioning an in Canada spousal sponsorship. The genuineness of it like I have now, and when there's higher rates of fraud, higher rates of people may be entering into marriages of convenience. Immigration is starting to scrutinize things a lot more that they never would have before because of that fraud. So even the days of just saying, Well, of course, we live together. Everybody knows we're common law. It's not a big deal. You know, we don't have a bank account in common because, you know, we just we're a modern couple. We don't need to share everything. Well, you're going to be very, very surprised when you see the feedback that comes back from immigration, the procedural fairness letters you get saying, Hey, we don't think you're actually common law. We just think your boyfriend girlfriend, not you don't have a centralized mode of existence. So all of these things are super important, and these are the things that we address with our clients as we're filing these
Alicia Backman-Beharry 37:13
and that's exactly the risk mark, right? Because if people didn't understand, if they thought an inside Canada, and they're inside Canada, and they had to file a spouse or common law partner clause, and they don't have enough proof, or that application gets returned or withdrawn then, and they filed that open work permit in the meantime, and they're counting on the ability to continue to work. Well, it all falls down like a house of cards, right? If that application is returned to them, or if they can't continue to work. So especially if they can't continue to work and maintain their status, they and they have to leave, then they're going to lose the spousal, even if it was accepted and was still processing. And so, you know, it's just making sure that the spousal is 100% correct, and then making sure the work permit is done on time, exactly how it needs to be done well in
Mark Holthe 38:02
advance, exactly. All right, Alicia, thanks so much, and thanks everyone for joining us on this episode, 171 of the Canadian immigration podcast. It's a delight to do these. We've had a little bit of a hiatus from them because of the summer and everything that's been going on, but we're looking forward to get back on track with these and releasing them. That's what happens when we've got a small team and we need somewhat of a break from time to time, and we, you know, as we work directly with our clients, and so that model is a little bit challenging sometimes when we're trying to to get all this good information released. So thanks for joining us and tune in again to another episode shortly. We wish you guys all the best as you navigate this crazy world we call Canadian immigration.
Speaker 1 38:50
Thank you for listening to the Canadian immigration podcast, your trusted source for information on Canadian immigration law, policy and practice. If you would like to book a legal consultation, please visit www.holthelaw.com you can also find lots more helpful information on our Canadian immigration Institute YouTube channel, where you can join mark on one of his many Canadian immigration live Q and As See you soon, and all the Best as you navigate this crazy world we call Canadian immigration. I.
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