Few things matter more to the law than consistency in its interpretation and predictability in its application. Both are essential to ensure immigration applicants are in a position to comply, and to help legal representatives advise their clients properly. That’s what the Immigration Law Section of the Canadian Bar Association is asking of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, or IRCC, when it comes to temporary resident status for visitors.
The issue is that neither IRCC nor the Canada Border Services Agency, or CBSA, is consistent in how it interprets and applies the Immigration and Refugee Protection Regulations when it comes to the validity of Visitor Records.
What prompted the CBA Section letter is a series of exchanges with the Immigration Representatives Mailbox, or ImmREPS, suggesting Visitor Records may be invalid once a temporary resident leaves the country.
Difficulties arise when visitors holding a Visitor Record whose expiry date has not yet passed attempt to re-enter Canada and are told they do not have status, sometimes because nothing was entered into the system to denote that they were first admitted on the basis of the Visitor Record.
The CBA Section recommends that the two sections of the IRPR be read together to mean that “the period of authorized stay on a Visitor Record continues to apply on re-entry to Canada. This interpretation will ensure consistent application of the law by IRCC and CBSA and predictability for immigration representatives and applicants.” Operational manuals should be amended to include this interpretation, to make sure it is applied everywhere consistently.
In addition, the letter states that the default position “should be that a Visitor Record remains valid on departure from Canada and if a person is readmitted to Canada on a Visitor Record, the period of authorized stay continues to be that stated on the Visitor Record produced at the time of readmission.”
There should be no need to enter any notes into the system since we can’t expect all officers to have time to do so everywhere all the time, or to demand that all visitors insist with Border Services Officers, or BSOs, that notes be entered.
Should a BSO have reason to deviate from the default position, the Section says they need to issue a passport stamp with a mandatory departure date or a new Visitor Record invalidating the previous one. “Absent a new Visitor Record or passport stamp with mandatory departure date, the visitor should be able to rely on the period of authorized stay indicated in the Visitor Record produced at the time of their re-entry,” the letter reads.