SeanOChuinn

all messages by user

10/20/2018
Topic: Sponsorship by My Wife

SeanOChuinn

Hello,

I will try to summarize as best I can. Apologies in advance for long post.

My wife is Canadian. I am Irish. We moved back home to Ireland in 2015 due to health issues of my mother and wanting to be closer to that situation. Prior to that I had been in full time employment in Canada for 6 years and had received my PR card which at this point is now "expired" as I have been out of the country consecutively for longer than the required period but my PR status is still active.

We tried to go to Canada on a 10 day trip on the 19th of October just gone, as my sister in law had had her first child and we wanted to visit. I knew I had an expired PR Card but had applied for an eTA to go on this holiday not realizing that an expired card still left my PR status as active as such, the eTA was then turned down:

A review of your file shows that you may still be or once were a Canadian permanent resident (PR). Canadian PRs are not eligible to apply for an eTA.

Unfortunately my wife had to continue the holiday on her own and I had to return to Ireland as there was no way to decide what to do or provide the required documentation in time. The communication above also gave me two options, a. the revoke my PR, b. to renew my PR but going through the documentation I don't know if we meet the requirements.

At this point we are trying to think to the future as she may well be in the situation I was in with her parents getting older and needing more support and we would want to return back home to Canada for prolonged periods of time. We're thinking that renewing the PR might be one bet but dual citizenship for myself (an Irish citizen) would be the best bet. And as far as I know the PR status is required for Citizenship.

Would anyone have any guidance on how to continue with this process and whats the steps we'd need to take?

Thank you in advance.