 Everybody welcome to our channel. Today I wanted to talk about a topic that comes up quite frequently with the consultations that I do. It's about renewing your permanent resident card if you are living and residing outside of Canada. I get a lot of clients who call me and they are permanent residents of Canada but for different reasons they haven't been living in Canada and they want to renew their permanent resident card. Either their card has expired many years ago or it just recently expired but they cannot come back and wait in Canada or they can't travel to Canada because they don't have a travel document so there is the option to file for the PR card renewal while you are living outside Canada but it's important to understand the consequences of that because there's a chain reaction that can happen of various things and depending on that it could even if you get your card renewed you might not be able to keep your permanent resident status so we're going to talk about that a little bit today. So first if you submit your application for PR card renewal you're living outside Canada and maybe you meet the residency requirement or you don't and you're filing under humanitarian grounds. Let's say either way you file for the renewal and it's refused. What's going to happen at this point is that at the moment you get the refusal you're not you don't lose your permanent resident status but if you want to keep it you're going to have to file an appeal at the immigration appeal division. Usually you have a timeline of 30 days or 60 days to file that appeal and if you do not file the appeal then after that deadline you will lose your permanent resident status. So filing the appeal you can still be outside Canada you are going to file it's a letter that you submit to the immigration appeal division saying that you want to file an appeal of the refusal and sometime later it could be quite a long time if there's a backlog at the immigration appeal division maybe six months later or a year later or two years later sometimes longer you're going to get a hearing date during that time you can be outside or inside Canada but it depends if you're able to return to Canada. So while you wait for your appeal you will still remain a permanent resident of Canada because a final negative determination has not been made on your permanent resident status and when the time for the appeal comes you'll be able to argue humanitarian and compassionate grounds as to why you deserve to keep your permanent resident status. If that decision is refused then at that point you lose your permanent resident status unless you file an application for leave and judicial review at the Federal Court of Canada you have 15 days to do that. Now if you apply for the renewal of your card you're outside Canada and your renewal is approved and you get a letter saying your card has now been issued you have to come and pick it up. This is a big problematic for some of our clients because only the clients only you can go and pick up your card you have to go and physically pick up your card at an immigration office and in a way this is something that immigration does I don't know why they do it exactly but it could be so that some people lose their status. It's a little bit of a tricky situation because if you can't pick it up in person then you could eventually lose your permanent resident status because you were not able to pick up your card. So you get a letter saying you can now pick up your card immigration will not mail the card to you you cannot give a mandate to somebody to go pick it up for you. So for that if you're outside Canada how will you pick up your card? So either you have to apply for a travel document but in some cases it will not be issued to you. You can apply for travel document on humanitarian and compassionate grounds but depending on the reasons why you are outside you might not get the travel document or if you're able if you are in the United States you can come in from the US border to Canada with your confirmation of permanent residence but at the border if you haven't met your residency requirement there are some officers that will issue a removal order and if you get a removal order you have 30 days to file an appeal if you don't file the appeal then you lose your permanent resident status. So it could be quite tricky then another thing that could happen is you apply for the renewal of your card you're outside Canada and you get a letter saying well you have to come in for an interview either you come for the interview if you can't come you have to apply for a travel document or if you don't want to come then you have to let us know and we'll make a decision based on the evidence that you provided. This is also very tricky because often if you don't show up for that interview then your PR card renewal application will be refused and again you have 30 days to file an appeal at the immigration appeal division to keep your status so that's also a little bit of a tricky situation that IRCC can can put applicants in and finally another another scenario would be and I've seen this many times with our clients is that you apply for the PR card renewal and then you get a letter from IRCC saying we are placing your application your renewal application on hold you have to apply for a travel document so they kind of put the burden on the embassy outside Canada to make a determination on your residency so you have to make a similar application for a travel document and it's the embassy or the consulate outside of Canada that's going to make the decision and if again if the decision is refused you have you have 30 days or 60 days to file an appeal at the immigration appeal division to be able to keep your permanent resident status so there's a lot of different scenarios and there's a lot of ways that things can go so it's really important if you're going to engage in this type of application renewing your car while you're outside maybe not being able to be physically in Canada you really have to get the right legal advice it's quite complex there's a lot of immigration applications where you can do it by yourself you don't need a lawyer but this type of situation it's really recommended you speak to an expert because you can waste a lot of money you can waste a lot of time and if you are a permanent resident in Canada and it's really important for you to keep that status and you consider Canada to be your only home it's important that you get the right information to see which pathway you're going to take and and depending on what happens you have the right information to act the way to ensure that you keep your permanent resident status if you have any questions about this particular topic you can send us an email it's info at keyork immigration law dot com thank you