Re-Enter Canada and PR about to expire

mabelclem: My family and I landed last Mar , 2008 and we stayed for about 5 weeks and return to UAE. This July we are planning to go back and our PR CARD is to expire on April,2013. Our main reason of finally settling in Canada is the education of our children. My son was assessed by a licensed Educational Psychologist and he got a very high score. We we're advised to move back to Canada since the educational system in UAE does not support giftedness. The question is will this reason be valid enough to be considered by the Immigration Officer? We would like to have some kind of assurance before we quit our jobs here and move to Canada. Losing our jobs will put more peril in the future of my kids.

To avoid confusion, I understand you to say that you landed and became PRs of Canada in March 2008, and have not been back to Canada since the end of April or early May in 2008.

If so, you are in breach of the PR Residency Obligation. That makes you inadmissible. That is not self-enforcing, and so long as you have valid PR cards there is some chance you can persuade POE officials to not issue a removal order when you next attempt to enter Canada. However, the extent to which you are in breach (well over a year by the time you attempt this in July) suggests that there is, at the very least, a substantial risk you will indeed be issued Removal Orders.

You will be allowed to enter Canada and you remain PRs. However if and when the Removal Order becomes enforceable you will no longer be PRs. You can appeal the Removal Order. That will delay it becoming enforceable for some time. Chances on appeal are not good.

I cannot begin to guess what the odds are of persuading the POE officials to be lenient and allow you entry without issuing a Removal Order. I have the sense that there is significantly more leniency at a POE for PRs with still valid PR cards than there is, say, for a PR abroad applying for a Travel Document to return to Canada. How much more leniency, though, again I cannot begin to guess.

I suspect, given the extent to which you are in breach of the residency obligation, that the odds are not very good. But again I do not really know.

A qualified, reputable, immigration lawyer, a lawyer, NOT a consultant, may be able to offer a realistic opinion.

To be clear: once a PR is outside Canada for more than 1095 days, the PR is in breach of the Residency Obligation and obviously so. Additionally, the date your PR card expires is mostly irrelevant. For PRs within their first five years of PR status, the fifth year anniversary of the day they landed is the day by which they must meet the initial 730 days of presence in Canada. You cannot reach that now, having been absent for more than 1095 days (out of the 1825 days during which you had to be present 730).

Well, its a little late to ask that question. You're not in a bargaining situation.

You applied, obtained PR status, and then returned back to UAE. Being a PR is not just about holding a valid PR Card, it is about residing in Canada and making it a home when given the chance to do so.

See: http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/newcomers/about-pr.asp#keep_status

Now it all depends on the Immigration officials at the POE in Canada. Of course you will only find out when you travel to Canada. Everything will happen from that point on.

This is the reason why CIC is getting more and more strict on enforcing PR residency obligations. People come, they land and then go back to their lives in other countries until they "need" Canada.

Good Luck, but unless you move right away to Canada and plan to live there, you're looking at tough time ahead. Even if you make it without issues, you won't be able to renew your cards until you've lived for 730+ days in Canada. So essentially putting yourself in a position where you can't travel without seriously jeopardizing your PR status.

Again, a Canadian immigration lawyer should be able to offer more insight into how this might go.

Even a well-informed, well-experienced lawyer, however, can only give you an opinion as to what your chances are, and there will be no guarantees, far from it.

It is my impression that many, many people go through similar circumstances: the validity of the original PR visa is limited, so they must come to Canada to land sooner rather than later, even though they are not ready to actually immigrate. So they land, return to their former/continuing circumstances planning to return to Canada to settle later.

And, actually, the way the PR residency obligation is set up, it not only facilitates but in many senses encourages this.

But it has a time limit. Three years (1095 days) at the most. It is essentially designed to give the new immigrant up to nearly three years to settle permanently in Canada (as canvis2006 points out, yes, the closer to that limit the new immigrant goes, the less the new immigrant can travel outside Canada once they do come to and settle in Canada . . . until they have remained long enough in Canada to be in full compliance with the Residency Obligation).

This is considered, by most Federal Court justices who have ruled on these cases, to be a very lenient standard as it is, and so once a Removal Order is issued, the odds against the PR in breach of the residency obligation are very high.

What we do not know, again, is the extent to which POE officials are lenient. There are many suggestions that they are fairly lenient, that they do not strictly enforce the Residency Obligation on . . . well that is where it gets murky. We really do not know the parameters of their practical discretion. It could depend largely on the personality of the particular officer conducting the entry interview. This is where experienced lawyers should know more.

We do know, from occasional but isolated reports (by individuals, and of course one always has to take into account the inherent unreliability of personal reports in an internet forum such as this), that POE officials are sometimes rather lenient.

We do know from IAD and Federal Court decisions that the Residency Obligation can be and often is strictly enforced.

We have the strong impression that this government, the Tory government, has been increasingly more strict about enforcing the Residency Obligation (and other provisions of immigration law as well) since they first came to power as a minority government, and may have escalated this some since they became a majority government.

Bottom-line: you waited too long for any guarantees. You will be gambling. If you have with you a credible, bona fide offer of employment in Canada, yes, I think that would help. I do not understand the "former employer in Canada" part, though, since you said you were in Canada just five weeks.

Again, attempt to obtain a consultation with a legitimate, reputable Canadian immigration lawyer . . . not sure how you do that from abroad but I think they facilitate this sort of thing at least by conference call or something. Of course it is not inexpensive, probably a few hundred dollars Canadian . . . but if leaving your current position will put you at much risk (as in risking long-term unemployment), you probably need to better know the odds of your gamble in coming to Canada now.

By the way, regarding your motives, your reasoning:
I do not know how a POE official will view your situation, but I suspect it is better if your thinking, your reasons, your motives, were to always settle in Canada but you just needed to get yourself in a better position to make the actual settlement move . . . in other words, I suspect that relying on a more recent reason, some change in circumstances (becoming aware of an advantage for your child for example), would be counter-productive as it would highlight, in a practical sense, that you changed your mind . . . I think it is better to have had, all along, a firm intent to settle in Canada but were faced with financial hurdles in making that happen.

This, however, is precisely the sort of thing it is best to discuss with a reputable, competent Canadian immigration lawyer. This is about the Humane & Compassionate arguments or reasons one might offer. This is a tricky arena because how such factors are looked at by Canadian border and immigration officials is not the same as you do: you might see, for example, that denying your child the advantages of an education in Canada is a "harship" to be taken into consideration under typical H&C analysis, in which the interests of affected children is a huge factor, but without any established residence in Canada to begin with, I believe this will NOT help . . . but, again, this is an area in which a lawyer can better guide you.

I am not personally well-enough acquainted with any Canadian immigration lawyers to recommend any in particular (indeed, I barely know one personally, and only a few others by references), but the following is the suggestion I usually offer in response to queries regarding finding a Canadian immigration lawyer.

To find a Canadian immigration lawyer:


You can go to the CanLII website or the Federal Court Decisions Web Site and search for "immigration residency permanent" and perhaps some other search terms (trying to limit the results to a manageable number) . . . using search terms to focus on immigration cases (searches can be structured to particularly focus on cases relevant to a particular issue, or just to CIC cases generally -- recognizing though that the vast majority are refugee appeals, which are not so relevant for most people here) and solicitors in the case are displayed toward the bottom of the published decision . . . be sure to look for solicitors who represent the individual and not the ones representing the Minister.

These are solicitors who, obviously, are practicing immigration law.

In CanLII you can also easily search just IAD decisions, which will give you a far larger number of PR residency cases but many times these individuals are not represented by counsel at that stage and again there is the problem of limiting the results to a practical number to look through.

Advanced search at both sites gives you more options and facilitates a better, more narrowly focused search.

Once you identify some names of solicitors you might be interested in contacting you can add their name to the search criteria to get just cases they were involved in, which might help to better choose particular solicitors to contact.

Once you have some specific names of solicitors you want to contact: you can use ordinary Internet search engines to look up their contact information and probably find additional information about them . . . and some have websites.

I do not.

Good luck.

The cost does seem high, quite high. (Paid around 250 an hour four years ago, but not in a major metropolitan area. I thought I got my money's worth . . . but, of course your situation is more problematic and with probably less certainty.

Do as much homework as you can and try to keep the consultation focused on the issues that matter. The more you know about the basics the less you will spend on having the lawyer explain the basics. Make them work for that much.