Live with Expired PR card

Hello all,
My Canadian PR card is expiring Aug this year, and i am U.S. Greencard. I am planning to permanently live in Canada but in the past i only stayed in Canada a few days. From reading the forum, i understand that i could enter the country and live up to 2 years then renew the card. That is a great advice.
1. I know with U.S. Greencard I would be fine entering Canada. Should i have to use Canadian PR card in order to proof that i have entered the country? But i'm afraid to be caught due to lack of residency requirement.
2. Can i enter Canada after Aug using U.S. Greencard? I have a family matter to handle which may cost a couple months delay.
3. With an Expired PR card, can i work legally? Does the employer require a valid PR card? How about Health Card and SIN card, drive license?
4. If i'm having a kid with Expired PR card, can my kid get Canadian PR?

Thank you!

In response to:

To clarify even further:

To clarify: CIC can only investigate the five years preceding the date of application for PR card renewal (if the applicant if a PR for more than 5 years

What you intend is true. But some words have more significance than might be appreciated at a glance.

. . . the only five-year period that can be considered in calculating whether an applicant has met the residency obligation is the one immediately before the application is received in the visa office.

But the scope of what may be investigated is probably larger, and thus what may be considered NOT in the calculation but in the assessment of the PR's representations generally probably goes beyond the five year time frame.

This may be similar to the Citizenship Residency calculation: for calculating time present in Canada, only the relevant four years is considered, but the Federal Court has confirmed that Citizenship Judges may consider facts and circumstances before and after that period in their overall assessment of the applicant and the applicant's circumstances . . . including, relative to their fact-finding function regarding claims of presence during the relevant time period.

To some extent this may be more nuanced than most people need to know. But, for example, this may loom large in some cases . . . such as the one where a PR had been living abroad for many, many years, subsequently married a Canadian citizen and after living together for two years attempted to obtain a Travel Document to return to Canada based on the in-Canada rule for accompanying a Canadian citizen partner abroad. Denied. Denial upheld in Federal Court. And both CIC and the Federal Court justice considered the PRs history beyond the relevant five years that counts for calulating presence purposes. Bottom-line in that case was that, in considering the long history of not residing in Canada, they found that the individual was not accompanying the Canadian citizen abroad.

That case may be something of a unique, one-time thing, but the principle I cite it for here is that whenever CIC or CBSA is looking at a PR, they can look at and consider the person's entire history, even though for the calculation itself must be based on the relevant five year time frame.

Beaver --  Thanks for the link.  My spouse is in that situation (been away from Canada for a long time, but has returned w/o PR card -- as she is from a Visa-exempt country).  She's been here ever since.  Here status was never lost -- so she is able to work, get medical coverage, etc.  Before applying for the PR card - (her first) she waited until she met the residency obligations.

ser111:

. . . the only five-year period that can be considered in calculating whether an applicant has met the residency obligation is the one immediately before the application is received in the visa office.

This is in reference an applicable operational manual, not a particular case, not a Federal Court decision which can be linked. The manual can be linked and indeed Beaver posted a link to that manual above, which is, again, OP 10 Permanent Residency Status Determination (this is also a link). Note: this manual is an Overseas Processing manual, and in this regard is discussing the processing of an application for a PR Travel Document.

The article you posted in your first post, at 4:05 a.m., regarding the potential to "repair the breach of residency from outside" [Canada] by marrying a Canadian citizen and living with that citizen I am not familiar with. From what I understand of current policy, that should work. But the emphasis is on should and the caveat is that there is a case I am familiar with which denied a PR a Travel Document in such circumstances, and that denial was upheld by a Federal Court, resulting in the loss of PR status. This case has been relevant to a number of comments I have posted in recent weeks, and I did make an effort to find it again but did not find it. I think I have previously linked it somewhere in this forum but I have not had time to go looking for it sufficiently to find it again.

I agree, for someone in a similar circumstance, particularly someone who has been living abroad and in breach of the residency obligation but who in the meantime married a Canadian citizen with whom they have been living, and who wants to return to Canada as a PR, yes, indeed, it would be worth finding and reviewing that case.

You can search for it yourself at the Can II site, using key words in your search criteria to focus on residency cases . . . but it is not easy to structure a search which will return all PR residency cases without also including a large, large number of refugee cases (problem is that certain key words occur in the names of the entities and laws involved, so if you include "not refugee" in your search terms, for example, that tends to exclude not only the refugee cases but many other cases in which IRPA or IRB are spelled out).

I plan to go find it again myself but not right away. And, as I said, I am confident I already did post a link to it here, in one of these discussions about perserving PR status.

NOTE: That case quite likely entailed other issues and some serious credibility concerns, which may have underscored the decision to decide that in those particular circumstances the PR was not "accompanying" a Canadian citizen partner abroad.




Harmonia:

Sounds like there is NO cause to worry much if at all.

The operational manual linked by Beaver is for Overseas processing; it is the operational manual prescribing procedures attendant an application for a PR Travel Document submitted to a visa office overseas. The PR card application process is a little different.

The discussion, in OP 10, about calculating compliance with the PR residency obligation, is nonetheless applicable, particularly relative to what counts.

The operational manual which covers the processing of applications for a new PR card is ENF Permanent Resident Card (this is a link).

See section 8, in particular, pages 23 to 30 in ENF Permanent Resident Card.

For the PR card application, processed initially in Sydney, the main thing is whether or not it gets sent to the local office before a new PR card is issued. If your partner waits until having a significant margin over and above the 730 days of actual, physical presence before applying, it should not get sent to the local office before the card is issued; no guarantees, of course, but it should be processed per the routine procedure.

Sometimes CPC-Sydney will request additional information, but I think this is not that common and is limited to particular issues (see section 8.5 in ENF Permanent Resident Card). This may or not be preliminary to a referral to the local office for an investigation.

The routine procedure is for Sydney to do a preliminary assessment and if the criteria is met, they issue a new PR card and send it to the local office. The local office contacts the PR to come in and pick up the card. When the PR comes in, depending on a variety of factors, there is either a minimal, perfunctory interview (checking ID documents, for example, collecting the old PR card if applicable, confirming primary information), or a more extensive interview, how extensive depending of course on what the circumstances are and whether or not, or to what extent, the officer has questions . . . your partner should have no problem responding to whatever questions are posed and should be given the new PR card.

Some PRs, though, may not be able to fully satisfy the officer, at that point, and it can go in various directions from there, ranging from a brief delay while this or that check is done to the issuance of a A44(1) report of inadmissibility (if the officer reasonably finds the facts support the conclusion that the PR is inadmissible, such as that the facts establish a breach of the residency obligation and there are not H&C grounds warranting preservation of PR status).

Going back to an application referred to the local office for an investigation: see section 8.6 (page 26) in ENF Permanent Resident Card.

The preliminary assessment in Sydney might identify issues for some PRs. For some applicants it may be apparent on the face of the application that they are not eligible to be issued a new PR card or required information is missing. I am not sure, though, whether or not Sydney denies PR card applications outright, but in some circumstances they return some applications.

If Sydney identifies issues, including for example an apparent breach of the residency obligation, they may request additional information from the applicant or send the application to the local office for an investigation; they can also request additional information and then send the file to the local office for an investigation.

Specific examples of situations "requiring referral" are stated on page 27 of the manual, ENF Permanent Resident Card. It is a long list.

What an investigation entails varies, probably varies greatly, at one end of the range not much more than a close review of GCMS and a query or three into readily accessible databases, at the other end of the range field officers doing police like-work.

I think the latter, where someone is actually in the field doing typical police-like work, is rare.

The operational manual describes a referral to the local office as a referral "for further investigation." Beyond that, the local office may in turn refer a case to CBSA for an investigation. I suspect, though, there are varying degrees of investigation in both respects.

In most cases, I suspect that the investigation is not much more than the close review of GCMS (including, in particular, a close look at all FOSS notes) and a query or three into readily accessible databases, plus some requests for information and documentation from the PR, including perhaps an interview with the PR.

The difference between an investigation and simply an assessment attendant routine processing is probably (I do not know this with any certainty of course, just extrapolating from all that I have learned about this stuff in the last four years plus some previous advocacy experience dealing with various bureaucracies in the past) a fine line. There may be some formality, for example, that must be met to conduct some queries otherwise restricted by policies and practices intended to protect privacy (this is probably what the referral to CBSA is largely about; it is my impression, for example, that CIC personnel do not have direct access to CBSA travel records, but by referring the matter to CBSA those records can be obtained and compared to other information, including the PR applicant's declared presence and absence).

But, for example, while again I do not know for certain, I believe that almost any assessment attendant routine processing includes running queries into databases for criminal records, including at minimum the U.S. and Canadian databases, probably some database reflecting Interpol records. This amounts to an investigation of a sort, or a background check of a sort.

I believe there is a lot of if . . . then . . . decision-making in any routine assessment; if this or that, then additional queries, checks, or such are done, and then if this or that, then more queries and checks, an escalator-like progression of if . . . then . . . with only a very few climbing into an investigation requiring someone to do something beyond what they can do from their desk.


Most of all, Harmonia, it does not sound as though your partner has much if anything to worry about. A PR who has been physically present in Canada (in contrast, say, to being in-Canada though physically abroad, based on criteria like being employed for a Canadian company or while accompanying Canadian citizen spouse) for more than 730 days should have little or no problem in applying for a new PR card.

And being from a visa-exempt country does, indeed, make life much easier for a PR who breaches the residency obligation.