We understand that COVID-19 has created a series of unprecedented and complex challenges, and we appreciate how difficult this can be for families looking to be reunited in Canada.
Many applicants in the spousal reunification streams apply for temporary residence visas with dual intent.
“Dual intent” refers to clients who apply for temporary status in Canada, while also having declared an intention to immigrate to Canada permanently through a permanent residence stream.
To provide further guidance on dual intent, the Department has updated instructions to officers by providing factors for consideration specific to sponsored spouses and partners, such as whether the sponsorship application has been approved, whether the application for permanent residence has received stage one approval, etc.
At the same time the Department is focusing efforts to address processing time for spousal permanent residence applications, looking to finalize approximately 6,000 spousal application decisions each month from October to December 2020. Combined with processing up to September, this rate will lead to about 49,000 decisions by the end of this year. These efforts, coupled with updated guidance, should help to reunite more spouses during these challenging times.
Supplementary messages
The temporary resident visa approval rate for spousal sponsorship applicants from 2019 to 2020 has remained essentially unchanged. In order to approve a temporary residence visa application for an applicant with dual intent, the officer must be satisfied, in accordance with section 179 of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Regulations that the applicant would leave Canada at the end of their authorized temporary stay, if their application for permanent residence was refused, and in consideration of subsection 22(2) of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act.
It is important to note that the need to assess “dual intent” is in the Act and cannot be overcome by program delivery instructions.
The genuineness of a spousal relationship is not assessed at the temporary visa stage. This is a feature of the permanent application. Roughly 9% of spousal permanent residence cases are refused on the ground that the officer is not satisfied the relationship is bona fide.
In 2019, top refusal grounds were due to the applicant’s inability to establish that they would leave at the end of their authorized stay if their application for permanent residence was refused, and related to either purpose of travel, family ties, assets, travel history or current employment.
Supporting facts and figures
From January to July 2020, out of 1,071 temporary resident visa applications finalized for spousal sponsorship applicants, 46% were approved.
While 91% of overseas spousal applications were approved in 2019, the approval rate varies from one country to another. The main reason for refusal of spouse/partner applications is the officer is not being satisfied of the bona fide nature of the relationship.
The variance in the approval rates between temporary residents and permanent residents results from the fact that the same client is being assessed on two different factors under the legislative framework: for permanent residents, the bona fide nature of the relationship; and for temporary residents, that they will leave Canada at the end of their stay.
