GitmeOuttaHere

He crossed over back in October planning to visit as a snowbird and stay the max of 6 months, you can just show your Canadian passport as you drive across the bridge. I don't get how they can claim he still has a valid LPR status after such a lengthy absence either, but they don't seem to care. They say that since his passport has never been stamped that they have no way of verifying he wasn't in the US the entire time??

I currently have a valid Canadian passport that I renewed in 2015 even though I am a PR in the US, I used my GC to come back to the US and they never stamped my Canadian passport, I am sure that if I was to go back to Canada and come back 40 yrs later I would not be so lucky.

Ok, wanted to post a quick update, My wife's father set up an appointment thru infopass and went and met with the immigration people and the "supervisor" told him that all he has to do is fill out an I-90 to get his GC back, they even pulled up his file from 1961 when he moved to the US and became and LPR at that time....

Apparently when you turn in your GC to Canadian authorities back in 71 they didnt care to do anything with it, and because of the VWP no passports were required back then, so there is no stamps on his passport/no way of tracking him from back then/or even now for that matter, so they are still considering him to have been a PR this whole entire time??? They don't even consider his 30 yr absence an issue, and said worst case scenario he may have to go in front of a judge, and they would not do anything about that anyway and would allow him to stay.

What I am concerned about is that there is a question on the i-90 that says "Since your were granted PR status have you ever filed form i-407 (abandonment of status), or otherwise determined to have abandoned your status".........to me when you leave and move back to Canada after 10 years and then want to move back to the US, that is "abandonment"......They x'd out that section on his copies saying that he doesn't have to fill that section out?

WTH It is no wonder there are so many problems with our system. I was hoping they were going to make it a little harder for him.

Also his classification of admission from back in 61 shows as an 01M.....I cant even find that CoA any more.

My wife is a US citizen and sponsored myself and our kids just over 3 years ago. Things have been great and we all have our GC's and I have not yet done the paperwork process to become a naturalized citizen yet and our kids are still under 18, so we have not done anything with that yet either....

Now my wife's father wants to come to the US and stay here permanently....He did have a GC back in the 60's, but turned it in and went back to Canada in 71, no he seems to think he can do an SB1 after a 40+ year absence, and baring that thinks my wife can just sponsor him if the SB1 route doesn't work. She/we do not want to be financially responsible/don't want to sponsor him. What does anyone think his chances are of getting here on and SB1. And if my wife already sponsored us 3 years ago, is there a waiting period before she can legally sponsor another family member.

We would prefer that for a number of personal reasons he stays in Canada and just snow birds it to the US for 6 months at a time, but that does not seem to be good enough for him.

Yes, it was completely necessary to get them green cards.

There are 4 requirements for automatic citizenship under the CCA;

1. The child has a USC parent (biological or adopted only - no stepparent), AND

2. The child lives with the USC parent, AND

3. The child is under age 18, AND

4. The child has been admitted as an LPR.

As you can see, no derivative US citizenship if the kids do not have LPR status (green card).

Thank you..Yes that explains it.

Yes My wife is the bio mom and she was born in the USA (although both her parents are Canadian) They moved back to Canada with her at 2yrs of age, and she did not reside in the US again on a permanent basis until we moved here. So my Wife is a USC and also has a "Canadian born abroad" birth cert from Canada....Dual citizenship I guess, she never applied for a Canadian passport while we lived there, just her US passport.

So once she applies for our kids passports, the 3 of them will be USC, and I will still have to wait another year and a bit to put in the full 3 yrs wait until I can apply for USC. And our kids and myself will have to also renew our Canadian passports as well since they will be expiring this year. Is it safe to assume that once all this is done we will all be dual citizens?

My wife is the Bio mom....In this case was it really necessary for us to go thru the whole GC thing for them when we did back in 2012?

Basically it sounds like I have to wait my 3 yrs, but the kids are good to go.

Wow, been here in TX for almost 2 yrs.....reading this makes me shudder over the memorys of the day back in mid 2012 when we did the whole interview thing....Got denied at the window over proof of domicile issues, and left feeling defeated.. Took another 6 weeks and some good ol Republican Senator assistance to get things done.

Don't Give Up!!

I dont want to hijack this thread but, I am in a similar situation....

I am almost 2yrs into a 10 yr GC and myself and our 2 kids did the whole GC process to get here.

Can my Wife who is the USC just go and apply for a passport for them since they are under 18yrs?? or do they also have to wait 3 years like I do?

I wouldn't worry about it. The credit agencies here in the US do not take any Canadian credit history into account when applying for credit in the US. Basically, who cares what happens to your credit in Canada...

We got here late last summer, no jobs, had sold our home in Canada so we had cash in hand. Got jobs right away...(way better than struggling like we were in Canada). We rent right now, and both have a secured line of credit so that we can build our US credit score. They have no idea what our credit was like in Canada (it was very good) and don't take it into account at all here for anything.

We left Canada but keep a bank account open there to keep paying our CC bills...We realize the moral obligation to pay our bills in Canada, but it almost seems foolish since it does not affect us here, and we have no plans on going back to Canada for anything but a visit every 2 or 3 years. I hardly think the credit card police are going to not allow us to reenter Canada at some time in the future over not paying off our Credit cards.

I would not worry about it myself if I where you.

FWIW... I purposely did not import my car the correct way.

We came down about 1 month before I got my visa and rented a place to live. We got shot down at interview over domicile because my USC sponsor and I were still living in canada and we/she had no official "residence" here. We needed to prove domicile and send in documentation to satisfy Montreal.

We ended up making the 2500 km drive and leaving our car in Texas and flying back home.

Fortunately they didn't question us too much about why we were entering because we were going to just use the "shopping" excuse because they really grilled us when we came down a month previous to our interview when we were still looking for a place. We had a place on paper at the interview, but my petitioner did not have a drivers license of anything else to prove domicile, and the "intent" was not enough. So on our 2nd trip down we drove the car and left it and I figured I would worry about getting it registered later, and worse case scenario sell it for parts if I could not register it legally.

Fortunately for me it worked out OK and the CBP at the airport were much nicer than the ones at the Ambassador Bridge. I did do everything the right way with our other vehicle because it was worth more than my car. So it worked out OK. Good luck to everyone!!

Just got my 1o year permanent resident card today too.

Life is Good!

On a side note, I also have a 95 Mercedes Benz that I brought down with me, however I did not want to bring them both at the same time. The other "issue" I had was trying to get the vehicle into the US before actually legally entering on a visa myself....I entered as a visitor about 1 month before I got my visa and we rented a place, I left it down south and flew back to Canada, so it never got imported properly....

I went to get plates and told them I did not have an HS7 for it.

I had to go to the CBP office at the airport. I had called ahead and he asked if I had a letter from the manufacturer, I told him I did not, I told him it had an EPA sticker but only the Canadian VSS sticker on it not the American one. He said that would be fine since the Canadian and US regulations were close enough (lol...lucky for me) I wasted no time in getting to the CBP office and fortunately got the same guy that answered the phone when I called. He took my registration from Ontario, and my passport with my visa in it, and I also gave him my newly acquired insurance card to shown I now have insurance here in Texas and it verified my US address. He came back in about 10 mins with a HS7 all filled out (box 2B) and I was on my way. He did not want to see the vehicle or anything either. So I will go and get my plates for this one next week.

The only other weird thing they also do here is to have the "Sheriff" check the vehicle to verify the VIN plate is attached and is the same as the one on the paperwork to make sure it is legit.

Unfortunately, they only do this on Wednesdays between 8am and 11 am. So it can sometimes take a few days to get everything done.

I don't know if they were just too lazy to go check my stickers or if they just took my word for it or what?

Also I have just found out this week when I went to get plates for my vehicle that what they gave me was not an HS7, but was still good enough for them give me my plates.

What I got when I crossed over and imported my vehicle says it is a CBP Form 7501. I have no idea why they gave me this form to fill out and not an HS7, but I was ready to fight them on the letter thing if they pushed the issue. I guess the good thing about my Ford is that it does have all the proper stickers and can easily be proven to be EPA and FMVSS compliant, not bad for a 7 year old vehicle

It took our senator to get involved to get ours moving, once he was on it they had our visas issued in 7 days from the time he contacted them.

Thankfully we poe'd within 24hrs of picking up our visas from the dhl location which was 2hrs from our previous home in Ontario, and are now happily setting up our new place 1500 miles away from where we used to be.

Good luck with everything.

Just an update....

Had no problems at all. Rolled up the the customs both with our sealed packet, and visas. The dude says "what are you doing with the vehicle?" To which I wanted to reply - driving it...duh! lol

But I kept my composure and said I was importing it. He asked if I have paperwork for it. I told him that it was already properly labeled with FMVSS and EPA stickers under the hood and that I was going to go fill out the HS7 form.

That seemed to be enough to satisfy him and we were pulled over into secondary to go thru all the normal paperwork to poe.

The guy inside asked me to fill out a paper which I assume was the HS7 (they had a cheat sheet made up with only the areas I needed to fill in highlighted on it to look at/copy) I put my info on it and once we were done all the other processing the guy gave me 2 printed copies of a document showing I legally imported the vehicle (duty free of course) and we where on our way.

Had our initial interview on June 20th and got 221G over lack of domicile.

My sponsors 1040's were below the requirement, so we had to use proof of assets to meet the guidelines.

They screwed up and put joint sponsor on the 221g as well and we pointed out the error at the interview, but somehow it was still in the system.

Sent in additional proof of domicile which they approved of, but sent me a letter saying I needed a joint sponsor.

Had to get Senator from the state we are moving to provide some congressional intervention, and whala...2 weeks later got a

letter from him and also a copy of an email he got from the consulate saying our visas were approved!!!

Finally...

We are tracking them and they should be in our hands by tomorrow.

Poe will be the following day. Cant wait

FWIW. I will be driving over my 05 Ford Freestar and it has the EPA and FMVSS stickers under the hood.

I am not planning on getting any compliance letter, as it is as plain as day right on the vehicle already so it should not be required. Also the speedo shows both km and mph and the digital odometer can be flipped from KM to Miles at the touch of a button.

I only plan on doing the HS7 and going on my way.

Erin&Marc if you are in OK and looking for a state inspection, head South to TX. They require a safety every couple of years, I know I will have to have one done before I can register my vehicles there.

I am poe ing on soon so I will let you know if I have any problems

Can anyone, by experience or otherwise give me an idea of how long it takes to get a passport returned from MTL without a visa being issued?

Our case is apparently in AP, as they made an error and asked for a joint sponsor(looked only at my petitioners 1040) and neglected to check our file and see that we had more than enough in assets to meet the poverty guideline requirements.

We are waiting for them to review our case, and are going to request our passports returned to us even though they have not completed processing them because we need to travel and take care of some business. We cannot be held up for weeks without passports for myself and our children. Apparently you can request them back and they will courier them back, but I hate having to do that if by chance it hampers getting things resolved sooner. Unfortunately we need to travel and are hoping 3 or 4 days is enough time for them to courier them back to us.

We brought our kids as I think they do have to be there if they are on the application, however they do not get their own separate interview or anything, and do not get fingerprints taken or anything like that.

The douche CO that interviewed us for some unknown reason questioned the paternity of "our" children, as if they didn't belong to my wife for some reason.

On a side not Montreal SUCKS!!!

Still waiting because of a stupid mistake they made at our interview!!

I will be going illegal soon if they don't hurry up.

Good thing we have Senator Cornyn on the case!!

Good luck at your interview. I hope you do not have the same issues we have had in Montreal with domicile and stuff. We had our interview in mid June. Hopefully we will have our visas within the next couple of weeks. Either that or I WILL get there some how...some way. Maybe not legally, but I will get there.

It should be as easy as them pulling the file, looking at it to see they made an error and issuing 3 Visas. This should not even be my problem, as they are the ones that have overlooked it. A case like this should be expedited and corrected as soon as possible with no further delay.

As far as a co sponsor...unless you are volunteering we have no one...None!!!

What is the point of getting a co-sponsor when we have over and above what is needed on a regular I-864.

I really don't think the CO at interview looked past the 1040's that my petitioner provided, and we had a ton of other documents to prove assets that never even got looked at!!! It is all in our file and I don't think it was reviewed at all when we sent in the domicile documents.

I can understand a joint sponsor if income/assets cannot be met, but this is not the case.

Also my Petitioner is contacting the Senator in her state to appeal for more help. We already had that ball rolling before we got hit with this again.

Hello all VJers. I would like to tell you about our experience and get some advice on how to move forward.

Everything had gone smoothly up until our interview in mid June. At that time the CO put myself/our children's visas on hold (gave us a 221g) based on my petitioner not being able to adequately prove domicile. On the form that the Co gave us is said "please submit more evidence of domicile and an i-864 form from a joint sponsor, along with our passports"

We immediately brought it to her attention that we were using assets and had more than enough to adequately fulfill the minimum 5x poverty guidelines and therefore did not require a joint sponsor. She agreed and just circled the "evidence of domicile" area on our 221g sheet and sent us on our way.

4 weeks later we were finally able to secure a residence for my petitioner in the US and provide all the necessary residency requirements and documents required to again prove domicile and sent it all in to the Montreal consulate.

Now another 2 weeks goes by and I get a letter from the Montreal consulate saying "need I-864 from joint sponsor".

Now I believe that at interview the CO was so hung up on domicile. (She did not even attempt to look at the evidence we supplied or review any of our original I-864 when at the window) and since she put both of those in the one paragraph on the 221g. (She verbally just said that our I-864 was fine when we challenged her about it at the window) But we did not see her make any changes in the system or go to type anything else in the computer.. I think that whoever is now reviewing the documents that we subsequently sent in feels it is lacking when really it is not.

So now it seems we have made it over the domicile hurdle, but how do we now challenge the I-864/joint sponsor which we really don't need. Is there a way to get someone in MTL to review our case and reevaluate it so they can see that we do have more than the minimum when using assets.

Any VJ'rs please help.!!

I have a question about the 3299. If my petitioner is already in the US and we already have our residence there ready to go.

Can she just do the 3299 and have our stuff sent over and just have it all left in her name?

We currently have 4 Uhaul uboxes loaded and waiting to go and have to fill out the 3299 and send it back to uhaul.

Can they be sent to the US if my petitioner is already there?

We just faxed off the privacy release and a well worded letter to the US senator in my petitioners state...Hopefully it will move now!!

My petitioner just filled out the privacy release form and typed up a well worded personalized letter in regard to our case and we are currently faxing it to the Senator that handles her state. His website is fantastic and has all the procedures easily outlined on how to get his assistance. Sounds like this is a routine thing for his office to handle according to his website.

It puts us at ease a little bit, but we will be more at ease once we get those passports back with a visa in them