Permanent Residency – Residency Obligations

A permanent resident is required to remain in Canada for a period of 730 cumulative days within the last 5 years preceding the latter of one of three occurrences (his attempt to enter Canada at a border or airport, his attempt to obtain a travel document at a visa post, his attempt to obtain a new permanent resident card at an in-Canada CIC service center).

The residency obligation can indeed be not so obvious to assess and calculate as it is a rolling requirements based on the sum of your movements to/from Canada or based on the obtaining of document. Therefore, there’s a lot of misunderstanding (and misinformation by practitioners who don’t under these rolling requirements) about residency requirements. For example, most permanent residents believe that the expiration of your permanent resident card is indicative of loss of residency. Similar to a passport (in which your nationality will never “expire”), the validity of your permanent resident card is not indicate of your permanent status. It is, rather, only indicative of your immigrant status at a given period of time.

Losing permanent residency due to failure of meeting the residency obligations can have detrimental consequences when it comes to working in Canada, obtaining social services or even returning to Canada as visitors.

If you believe you run the risk of failing the residency obligations or are at risk of losing your PR status in the future, we urge you to contact our firm so we can properly assess if your fears have merit. We will calculate your residency obligations under the rolling requirement method and assess strategies of preserving or perhaps re-acquiring permanent residency.

CIC is cracking down on residents who appear to be abusing the residency obligations. As in most government crackdowns, some of the officers are overzealous when investigating your immigrant status. If you are subject to an “investigation” to determine if you meet the residency obligations, we invite you to contact us immediately to explore your options and consult your rights.

Deliverables with respect to assessing permanent residency and determining residency obligations:

• Excel calculation on residency for the purpose of assessing permanent resident status
• Assessment if you are at risk or have lost your permanent resident status on the count of not meeting the residency obligations
• Assessment if you qualify for an exemption of the residency obligations as it pertains to physical presence in Canada
• Strategies to overcome residency obligation failures
• Preparation, representation and filing of a permanent resident card from our Montreal, Canada office
• Preparation, representation and filing of a travel document to a Canadian consulate or Embassy
• Assistance and response to a residency obligation investigation by CIC