Please help: sponsoring process

Even though you are in the right forum for your own immigration, this particular inquiry would be better made in the Family Class Sponsorship forum.

Some observations regarding:

I didn't include her in my application because I started my application process before I met her and later when I had already met her, I was advised that it was better to continue my application by myself and then sponsor her.

The important question is whether or not your marital status has changed. If so, you must disclose that to CIC during processing of your application, and even if it happens the day before you land, you must still disclose it, at the very latest, before landing. This is important even though it would cause some delay in your own processing. It appears, from many reports, that many people are given very bad advice in this area. Otherwise it is likely to lead to a partner being forever banned from being sponsored by you, and could in fact actually lead to the revocation of your own PR due to inadmissibility for having made a material misrepresentation in your application for PR (this includes any representation made right up to the conclusion of the landing, and includes misrepresentations made by omission).

If just a "girlfriend" this is not an issue.

If, however, you have been living together, there is an issue.

The problem, if you have been living together, is that CIC can later infer that you were in a conjugal relationship that should have been disclosed ... and there are numerous reports of people being caught in a sort-of-no-man's-land where they do not have sufficient proof to establish a common-law relationship that would enable the partner to be included in the application, but there are sufficient factual circumstances that CIC might later infer that it was a relationship that had to be disclosed and the partner examined, and a failure to do so results in a ban on sponsoring the partner.

So, if you have been living together, you need to be VERY careful about how you proceed. And especially so if you have been living together for a significant period of time ... and if you have been living together for nearly a full year, well, that is problematic.

BTW, no amount of separation beginning now will really cure this. So coming to Canada and waiting even a year or more before marrying and making the application will NOT eliminate the risk of a partner being banned for a failure to disclose a conjugal relationship that existed during the processing of your application.

Edited by dpenabill - 26 Jan 2011 at 3:50pm

If you have not lived together, there should be no issues.

Your address history for your application will show where you lived.

She will, of course, have to provide a complete address history for where she lived.

Since you did not live together, these will illustrate that. Moreover, if you look at the application forms, there are multiple items in which it asks whether or not you are living together, and whether or not you have lived together. Answer these, like all questions, honestly. Living together is strong proof of the genuineness of a relationship and so some couples are inclined to live together and submit proof thereof to bolster the proof of the relationship's genuineness, but if you did not live together you did not live together. Of course living together is necessary proof if the qualified relationship upon which the application is based is a common-law relationship. But not having lived together prior to marriage is not at all problematic. She, in particular, will still have to thoroughly outline the development of the relationship, the nature and extent of time spent together, and so on (again, see application forms). So there will be plenty of opportunity to establish what the real facts are attendant the course of your relationship, and I assume you have plenty of such evidence, so the fact that you were not living together should be easily apparent throughout the application.

I really do not know what to say about her accompanying you as a visitor. Personally I would not complicate things that way, but again I do not really have much insight into this aspect.

If you marry the day before you land, well that's the same problem I initially talked about.

If you marry the day after you land (practically this is not likely, but for the sake of this hypothetical it covers the gamut of possibilities), you can sponsor her. I doubt that would hurt at all, though they may look a little more closely at the facts to be sure that the two of you were not in a common-law relationship prior to your landing. But if those are the facts, that you were not living together, should be no problem ... again, even if you marry the day after you landed (actually more than a few people land and almost immediately return to their home country to settle all kinds of affairs ... waiting until you actually have the PR card in possession is the better idea though).

You cannot really begin the sponsorship process until you are (1) in a qualified relationship, and since you have not been living together that will need to be in a married relationship, and (2) have the necessary documentation to submit with the application, including an official certificate evidencing the legal marriage, as well as all the other documents required -- these can take some time to gather, including the medical exam (unlike the skilled worker app process, a sponsored PR applicant obtains a medical examination prior to submitting the application and includes the original copy of the receipt evidencing the medical exam), police certificates (I'm guessing that this is different from the skilled worker app process as well; in any event, here too the applicant must obtain these in advance of submitting the application, with some exceptions for certain nationalities, and include the original with the application), and so on.

In other words, I think you can marry as soon as practical after you land and begin the sponsorship application forthwith. Logistics and administrative preparation, the practical limitations if you will, will be the real factors determining how soon you marry and how soon the sponsored PR application is actually submitted.

Again, visit the Family Sponsorship forum and you should find a good deal of help with any questions about this process that you have.