 Hi everybody and welcome to our channel. My name is Mary Keorg, immigration lawyer at Keorg Immigration Law. Today I wanted to make a video on restoration. This year we have had a lot of clients and inquiries about restoration applications, particularly because of the pandemic. So a lot of people had to stay in Canada longer than intended. They weren't able to travel either because it wasn't safe or their flight was canceled or they had to stay in Canada with their loved ones. So what is a restoration? A restoration is for example when you come into Canada on a visitor visa and you overstay your status. So you were going to stay six months, the officer allowed you to stay six months or for example you entered, you got a visitor record for three months or four months or two weeks and instead of leaving at the expiration of the status or filing on time in Canada extension of your visitor status which you can do typically we like at the office we file one week before on IRCC website it says to follow 30 days before but as long as you file at least one day before you're okay. If you fail to do that then you file at a status and there's typically a 90-day period to file a restoration application so that you could if it's approved you revert back to being a visitor. So this is something that's allowed in the law to allow some time for people to fix the problem which is that they're now out of status. What happened with IRCC during the pandemic is that they allowed some flex they are they are currently allowing some flexibility so if you overstayed your visitor status you have or it could be also another temporary status you have until December 31st to restore your status so that 90-day is longer just because IRCC understood there's a lot of people that were caught by surprise because the pandemic and there's a lot of situation where people weren't able to apply online get to a computer figure out what to do to extend their status get in touch with the representative find the right lawyer for them so right now that's the rule I'm not sure what's going to happen in the new year new rules will come out but currently you have until December 31st to restore your status if you let your status expire. Now a restoration application a lot of people think that oh it's just the same as for example the in Canada extension I just have to add a $200 fee on top of the $100 but at our office we treat them a little bit differently we take it very seriously when someone is at a status because it is something serious in general when you are a foreign national you're visiting you never want to fall out of status it's very important to keep track of that so when we do restoration we include a lot of information about why you fell out of status so is it because you couldn't find the right information is it because you tried what efforts did you put and you weren't able to so it's important to cover that and ideally have some documentation as well and on top of it all the usual stuff for for an in Canada extension application so the ties to your home country how you're going to financially support yourself while you're waiting who are you staying with what was the main purpose of coming so for example if you came you know we have a lot of clients for example who came to visit a fiancee or a spouse or a parent you know just in March they came for a couple of weeks or in February or in January of this year 2020 and then and they were supposed to go back but the pandemic happened and now they had to stay longer so is it because you know you're like I said earlier your flight was cancelled or the country where you were going to return to was in a very bad situation and you just wanted to stay longer in Canada to feel more safe so whatever the reason was it's important to explain all that and not just ask for a restoration thinking that automatically it will be approved if you have any questions about the restoration application or in Canada extension of your visitor status please don't hesitate to contact us and we would be happy to help you thank you