inland vs. Sydney Australia

[nurseL]

We are an Australian/Canadian couple living together in Toronto for 18 months, dated back in Australia for a year.

We are engaged and planning to marry in summer of 2016 in Canada. However my fiance's open work permit visa expires in Feb 2016. So we are looking at applying for spousal sponsorship. Our case is pretty straightforward...no children involved. We met in Aus, dated, moved to Canada together, now want to stay here.

We were just looking at wait times - if he applied to Sydney would he be considered "person to be sponsored lives outside of Canada"? The wait time would be 13 months vs. 26 months if he applied inland. Am I interpreting the wait times correctly?

So a few questions:
1. Our application office choices are either Canada or Sydney...we cannot apply to say Brazil where the wait time is only 5 months?
2. Should we apply after we are married? or continue to pursue common-law.
3. We are planning on going back to Aus in December 2015 for Christmas. Will leaving the country affect his application or should we submit upon our return to Canada?

Thanks!

 

[canuck_in_uk]

1. You cannot choose your visa office. You can only choose inland or outland.

2. Why wait? Apply as common-law now.

3. It would have no effect on an outland app. If you apply inland and are then refused entry back into Canada, the inland app would be cancelled.


Sydney averages around 8 months right now, with many apps being processed faster.

 

[Rob_TO]

The wait time would be 13 months vs. 26 months if he applied inland. Am I interpreting the wait times correctly?

Inland, yes.... outland, no.

For inland the 26 months means you will probably be waiting 26 months for PR. Those are real-time stats of processing.

For outland they show 80% processing times (NOT average times), meaning the worst-case time to complete 80% of apps. So basically 80% of apps were completed in the provided time or quicker. Typically outland apps are done quicker than posted. As mentioned above, average for Sydney would be around 8 months these days. Check the Sydney thread for times people are actually seeing.

With an outland app, there is no OWP associated with it. So if the app is still processing when his current work permit expires in Feb 2016, and he can't renew it, he'll need to change his status to visitor to stay here and will need to stop working until he gets PR.

But due to quicker overall processing, outland is most likely your best option. Especially if you intend to travel during the process.

In hindsight, you should have applied 6 months ago when you first reached 12 months cohabitation to become common-law.

 

[kiwi_girl]

Ours got processed through Sydney much much quicker than expected!

 

[GustavesF]

Never apply inland if it can be avoided.

Inland is just a trick so CIC can ignore your application for a few years.

 

[nurseL]

What if he gets called for an interview?
Will we both have to go to Sydney? and how much notice do they provide?

If it's just him then maybe he can go back to Aus towards the end and wait out his PR approval.

OR can he reapply for his OWP and then apply for PR in sydney?

 

[canuck_in_uk]

What if he gets called for an interview?
Will we both have to go to Sydney? and how much notice do they provide?

If it's just him then maybe he can go back to Aus towards the end and wait out his PR approval.

OR can he reapply for his OWP and then apply for PR in sydney?

There is pretty much no chance of an interview unless you have some huge red flag that you haven't mentioned. Don't factor it into your decision.