Adil was a Canadian citizen, but lived abroad for many years where he married Hanna. When he returned to Canada, Hanna came with him as a visitor.

Adil hired Legally Canadian to apply for a permanent residence for Hanna under the spousal sponsorship application.

They wanted to hire a lawyer right away, instead of going on their own. We were glad that they did so, because their application was actually rather risky. They had a significant age difference – more than 20 years – and this is something that can cause Immigration Canada to doubt the genuineness of the marriage and refuse the application.

We put together a sponsorship application with emphasis on the genuineness of their relationship, and addressed a number of other issues.

Hanna’s visitor status was about to expire (it’s valid for 6 months), so we applied for a work permit, which extended her temporary status.

Another tricky issue was that Hanna did not have her police certificate from her country of citizenship – in some countries it proves to be troublesome to obtain. This is a real issue for Immigration Canada, so we needed to request an exemption to get around it.

So what happened?

Application was approved within 12 months without any additional requests from Immigration Canada.

🥳