Questions for Spousal Class

It does not sound like your relationship would be rejected as being a "marriage of convenience".  It's possible, but it doesn't sound like any rejection basis I've ever read about.

People usually say "there is no appeal process for Inland sponsorship" but what that means is "there is no right of appeal to the IAD".  Frankly, for most applicants this is a red herring.  You always have the right to apply to Federal Court for leave and that takes 6-9 months.  An IAD appeal through Toronto (the most common office) is 2-3 years.  It's almost always faster to FIX the issue and re-apply.

Cohabitation in a conjugal relationship is the actual terminology - so they want to know about when you were a couple.  But since you are married that's the qualifying relationship, and that's what matters.

We submitted several letters and didn't have any notarized.  You can do so, but I don't see it adds much value.  Faking evidence of that type would be misrepresentation and cause you some SERIOUS problems.

Good luck - some people use an attorney, some do not.  In either case you have to do quite a bit of work as the application is really rather personal.

Well, the good news is that if you apply via Outland and it's refused, you have 6 months for an IAD appeal (Vancouver and Montreal are reasonably fast.  Toronto is the 2-3 year office.)

I've never seen sample letters - I just drafted them myself to say what I wanted people to say.  I'd then give them a copy of my draft and ask them to modify it as they see fit.  Nobody made much in the way of changes to the letters.  We had one from each of our family members, one from our doctor, one from the owner of our gym, and one from my spouse's best friend.  None were notarized.  They weren't fancy, they just explained who the person was, how they knew one (or both) of us and why they believed our relationship to be genuine.

In our case it was important - my first application was refused (medical inadmissibility) and as a result it was an automatic red flag.  We did have one important factor - we'd started seeing each other just before I submitted that first application and I have evidence of same.

The most important part of that application is your story - the narrative.  It should tell your story (or you can each write one and tell the story from your own perspective, which is how we did it.  I wouldn't write or edit my spouse's narrative and I can't read it now without crying.)

The purpose of the "evidence" then is to corroborate your narrative.   The officer reads your narrative and then looks through your evidence and sees how it all "fits together".  That includes pictures, letters, telephone logs, chat logs, documents, travel receipts, etc.  Nobody is going to expect you to corroborate every piece of your story but as long as the story is consistent and you corroborate key elements, you'll be successful.

My first application (as a skilled worker) ran into a snag when they discovered a health condition that might reasonably be expected to create excessive demand on the health care system of Canada.  The valuation model is rather one-sided as it only looks at outgo and ignores any contributions (and I pay quite a bit just in income tax each year - about 10x the cost level they were concerned about).   Further, I had both group and personal insurance coverage for 98% of the projected costs plus an employer funded PHSP - a form of "health savings account" that would have paid the remaining 2%. Indeed, even if the insurance hadn't paid for some reason, the PHSP was funded above the level of anticipated cost - which was all about medication costs.

They ignored all of that and just said I was inadmissible.  Well, somewhere in the 30 months it took for them to reject my application I met someone very special and we were living together more than a year before the refusal and were married 7 months before it. 

When the refusal arrived I initiated an application for leave and judicial review in Federal Court.  After two months we submitted a sponsored spousal application.  I'd expected an 18-24 month period and frankly I didn't want to wait 12 months before starting the 18-24 month clock.  While it sounds good to challenge a negative decision in Federal Court I was pragmatic enough to realize there's about a 20% chance of the application for leave being granted - which means they give you a hearing, and about a 20% chance of the application for judicial review being granted.   I thought my odds were better than that and - to be honest - I really wanted to earn my PR on my own.  But more than proving I could beat CIC, I realized I didn't want to risk being forced to live apart from my spouse.  Since my work permit expired in September and there was a potential chance they would refuse to renew it (due to the medical inadmissibility) I went ahead with the sponsored application.

I didn't abandon the application for leave and judicial review and it went along in parallel.  The application for leave was granted in July 2012, with a hearing scheduled for mid-October.  By that time I'd become convinced that I had a very good chance of prevailing in Court.  The government had not presented much in the way of counter-arguments (other than the fact I could apply in the spousal category) and I'd read so much case law I'd concluded that cases where CIC had lost were not as strong as my own case.

Buffalo was closed in May and the chaos at the time meant that the sponsor approval took 3.5 months (it's about a month right now as I recall).   I figured they wouldn't even open my application until Christmas time.

However, the granting of leave created serious pressure inside CIC to wrap up my application.  in early September someone in Ottawa reviewed the application and concluded it met all the statutory requirements.  The only reason it didn't move forward at that time was due to the prior refusal.  Less than a week later a senior officer (they seem to have lower numbers in the GCMS system) picked up the file again, reached the same conclusion and said the prior refusal was no material in this case and marked the file "RFV" (ready for visa) and send it to LA for issuance.

Two weeks later LA issued a PPR.  That same day, after discussions between CIC's attorney and my attorney, we withdrew my application for judicial review.  Three weeks after the PPR they issued my COPR and I landed the same day I received it.

While I cannot prove that the legal action made a difference, there is no doubt in my own head that it took what likely would have been an 18-24 month process and completed it in 7 months - and that with a record long 3.5 month sponsor approval.  Indeed, I was one of the very first US applicant cases to be approved by CPP-O.  People I know that applied around the same time are still waiting.

Hope the weather in Victoria is nice, we're having a nice day here in Vancouver, though there are some clouds now that weren't out earlier this am.

Wow computergeek, what an immigration story! Thanks for sharing! Our immigration process should be a piece of cake as it is rather straightforward. We just always thought he would qualify through his job, so this spousal application is quite new to me.