US Citizen Married to Canadian

While there are ways to obtain a work permit, practically speaking the spousal class sponsorship is the route you need to take. It is work, not easy, but should not be overwhelming.

The sponsorship application is actually rather manageable and tens of thousands of people make this application every year without professional help. It is not, however, a one-weekend project. It takes a sustained effort, some focused research, a significant amount of document and information gathering, and careful compilation.

And it is not cheap. This is a major event in life. Takes effort and it costs some.

If it really is overwhelming, there are lawyers and consultants who will prepare the application for you . . . for a pretty substantial fee of course.

At this site you really want to be in the "Family Class Sponsorship" forum; lots of people there to give you good advice. A word of caution: the trend at POEs continues to get tougher. The longer you are in Canada, overall as well as relative to the most recent year, sooner or later they are going to get tough on you . . . sooner or later they are going to say "get permanent status if you want to return to Canada." And not too much later than that, they will enforce that admonition. This will be because of your obvious ties to Canada and the increasingly obvious fact you do not really qualify for entry as a "visitor." They are usually very lenient about this (though not any where near what they used to be), but people who spend a lot of time in Canada and who have a permanent partner in Canada are expected, sooner or later, to obtain appropriate status to live in Canada.


Back to the sponsorship application:

Foremost, take your time going through the CIC website. Be sure to do an "out-of-Canada" application (even though you are in Canada -- ask about this in the Family Sponsorship forum, and the response will be loud and clear). Thus, start at
http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/information/applications/fc.asp

READ carefully, thoroughly, and re-read, re-read. A few times. Take your time. Especially the "Guide to sponsorship" and the "Guide to Immigrating." Do not worry about what you do not understand the first couple times through! Focus on what you do understand. Print copies of the various forms and begin filling in draft responses, very rough draft responses, focusing on --

-- identifying information you need to collect (there will be quite a bit . . . reconstructing one's address, work, and educational history alone can require quite a bit of work);

-- documents you need to obtain (such as police clearance certificates, birth certificates, marriage certificate)

-- evidence to support your story of the relationship (from photos to correspondence, evidence of living together, evidence of contact when apart, letters of support from family, friends, colleagues)

-- and noting what you do not quite understand . . . recognizing, though (trust me on this), as you work your way through the application forms multiple times and gathering the documentation, the fuzzy parts will come into better focus . . . so you can ask questions by either calling the CIC helpline or, probably better, coming back to this site and asking questions in the Family Sponsorship forum.

Most of us here have submitted our applications without the assistance of an attorney and I'm sure you'll be fine without one as well. Just read through things carefully and slowly as dpenabill has suggested. Good luck!

As I said in my first post: almost certainly file "Outland," even though you are in Canada, still file an "out-of-Canada" application.

The url I provided was specifically to the application forms for the out-of-Canada process.

Visit the "Family Class Sponsorship" topic/thread here for more pertinent information about this.

Many, many of us did it this way. I am an American who remained in Canada from months prior to applying to well past having the PR visa in my hand. My route is an incredibly common one for Americans with partners in Canada (for couples who want to settle permanently in Canada . . . of course some couples go the other way, to the States).

For Americans who are otherwise not out-of-status, the inland process is almost always a bad idea (and even for most Americans who have overstayed and are out-of-status, the best route is to fix the status problem first and then still file an out-of-Canada app). Lots of discussions about this in the Family Class Sponsorship threads, but virtually no disagreement: for an American without status problems, even though in Canada, file the out-of-Canada application (which just means it goes to the Canadian Visa Office in the Embassy in Buffalo for processing).

what is wrong in filing inland though? i did it years ago all by myself.. no problem..
you won't be able to work for several month though, not until your application is  aproved in principle.. as soon as it is they will issue you a temporary open work permit valid for 1 year. it's renewable (150$ for a year)
so again... there's absolutely no problem.. just make sure to be in status all the time, you will have to concurrently file 6 month extension for your stay

but even if it takes longer doing inland at least both of them will be living together and its not like flying back and forth.