I can't really agree with everything RobsLuv says here, and I also think she might be a little too pessimistic.
RobsLuv said:
Your visitor permit was invalidated when you left Canada. An officer, on entry, can decide to allow you to re-enter on it, but it's not a re-entry permit ...
First of all, it's not a "visitor permit" and it doesn't really "permit" anything, really. It's a "visitor record" (VR) and it records the fact that you've been asked to leave by a certain date. It's true that it doesn't authorize re-entry, but it doesn't prohibit it either.
It really says nothing about re-entry, but it does record the fact that some officer decided it was okay for you to stay until September. Nowhere that I know of does it say that leaving the country invalidates this. You still have to leave by September ... if you are let back in.
The officer at the border has to weigh the evidence and decide whether you are going to stay past the date that you're allowed to stay. It's helpful to the officer to know that someone else already looked over the evidence and decided that it was okay to stay until Spetember. They will mainly want to know if something has changed that would make it unwise to continue to let you stay until September.
Because you have applied for permanent status, you can no longer convince the officer who interviews you on your entry to Canada that you only intend to stay temporarily. There is such a thing as "dual intent", which says that a PR ap in process does not preclude you from proving intent to stay temporarily, but because of your ties to Canada, and your lack of ties to the States, you risk not be allowed to enter.
I don't agree that she "can no longer convince the officer". So long as she's still planning to leave when the VR says she has to, and she won't work or study, and she hasn't become a criminal in the meantime or something like that, it should be okay with almost any border officer.
The face that she was in the U.S. visiting family strengthens her claim to ties with the U.S., if anything, and the very fact that she went there helps to show that she is willing and capable of going back to her family at any time.
Let me tell you my experience. I brought my partner to Canada in early February of this year. He was a couple of days short of being evicted and he had no money at all. We moved him to his dad's place overnight then came to the border with the PR forms 90% filled out. We told the officer at the border he was my partner and we were about to apply for PR. The secondary officer didn't like the fact that we hadn't sent in the application yet and that we hadn't even gotten a fee receipt. She gave him a 3-month VR anyway, even though she thought he had insufficient ties to the U.S. She urged us to get the application in and apply for an extension.
We applied for the extension and that came in about 7 weeks ago. So, 2 weeks ago, against advice we had received here, we had to go back to the U.S. to get some summer clothes. We waited as long as we did because there was a family reunion 2 weeks ago. We still have not sent in the application because of various delays, but we have amassed hundreds of pages of evidence to add to the forms we filled out in February. We really tried to send it before our weekend visit but it just wasn't quite complete, so we took everything with us, including the receipt for the medical check, that the extension said we needed to get done within 90 days (we did that long ago).
The interview at the border was very brief. How long were we gone, why did we go (to get summer clothes and we mentioned the reunion later), what was the value of things we were bringing back. He looked at the VR attached to the passport and asked my partner when he was going back to the U.S. He replied November 2 (same as the deadline on the VR). The officer waved us through. We have never been through the border together in less than 20 minutes before and never without a secondary inspection.
It's a good thing it went quickly too, because my partner had us booked on a surprise dinner cruise through the 1000 Islands and we made it there from the border with only about 15 minutes to spare before the boat started boarding.
