Effective December 22, 2014, Citizenship & Immigration Canada (CIC) will be issuing Open Work Permits to certain spouses or common-law partners who are applying for permanent residence from inside Canada. Also previously, sponsored spouses would have to wait until first stage approval to be issued open work permits. Since the first stage approval is taking nearly 16 months, it is creating major hardships in a way, that, these people cannot work while living in Canada and while waiting for their applications to be finalized.
Applicants who have already submitted their application for permanent residence under the Spouse/Common-Law class but have not yet applied for an open work permit can do so with immediate effect.
