A visitor comes for a temporary purpose: tourism, family, a short course, or business that does not enter the labour market. The usual stay at the border is up to six months. The officer can give less. A visitor does not work and does not study in a program longer than six months. Staying after the stamp or the visitor record expires is loss of status.
Your options
- eTA — fly to Canada, or transit by air, if you are visa-exempt. Not a visa. Not permission to work or study.
- Temporary resident visa — the stamp in the passport if your citizenship requires a visa.
- Business visitor — meetings and negotiations, paid from outside Canada. Not a licence to do a Canadian job.
- Super Visa — a long visit for a parent or grandparent. Not permanent residence.
How we can help
- Pick the travel permission from the passport, and keep work and long study off a visitor file.
- Extend a stay before it ends, or say when restoration is the only window left.
Electronic Travel Authorization (eTA)
- Permission to fly to Canada, or to transit through a Canadian airport, for a visa-exempt foreign national.
- Linked to the passport. Typically valid for five years or until the passport expires, whichever comes first.
- You still have to convince the border officer that you are a genuine visitor.
- Visa-required nationals do not use an eTA. They need a temporary resident visa.
- Citizens of the United States do not need an eTA for an ordinary trip. Permanent residents of the United States are not visa-exempt just because they live there. If their citizenship requires a visa, they need a visa.
- An eTA does not cover study longer than six months or work. Those need their own permits, with the travel permission on top.
How we can help
- Say whether the passport needs an eTA, a visa, or neither, before a flight is booked.
Business Visitors
- Meetings, site visits, negotiations, after-sales service under a contract signed abroad, and a conference. Paid from outside Canada.
- You do not take a Canadian job, join a Canadian payroll, or do the hands-on work a Canadian would be hired to do. If you do, you need a work permit. Calling the trip a business visit does not change that.
- There is no separate “business visa” that authorizes work.
- A visa-exempt business visitor who flies uses an eTA. A visa-required business visitor uses a temporary resident visa and should say the purpose is business. The officer can still limit the stay.
- Someone who will actually work uses the work-permit pages, including free-trade professionals, intra-company transfers, and IT business visitors.
How we can help
- Read the agenda and the payer. If the trip is a Canadian job, we move it to a work permit.
Super Visa
- A temporary resident visa for the parent or grandparent of a Canadian citizen or permanent resident.
- Stay of up to five years at a time. The visa itself can be valid for up to ten years.
- Not permanent residence, and not family sponsorship. Staying does not accumulate permanent status. The file does not convert if a sponsorship round later opens. That is a new application.
- The host child or grandchild must meet an income test based on the low-income cut-off for the family size.
- Medical insurance from a Canadian insurer, at least CAD $100,000 of coverage, for the period the rules require, plus a medical exam.
- Ties to the home country still matter. The person is a visitor who is expected to leave.
- People use it when the parents-and-grandparents round is closed, when the sponsor does not meet the three-year sponsorship income test, or when the parent wants a long visit without becoming a permanent resident.
How we can help
- Check the host’s income and the insurance before the application, and keep it separate from a sponsorship that is not open.
Other
- A temporary resident visa is the counterfoil for a visa-required national. It lets the person travel to a port of entry. The officer decides the length of stay.
- A multiple-entry visa allows more than one trip. It does not allow a continuous stay for the whole validity.
- Visa-exempt nationals who arrive by land from the United States generally do not need an eTA, because the eTA is an air rule. They still have to be admissible.
- A visitor record extends a stay inside Canada, or gives a status document to someone without a stamp. File it before the current stay ends. Filing on time gives implied status. Filing late does not.
- Restoration exists only for a short period after status is lost, and only if the restoration rules are met. It is not a planning tool.
- Dual intent applies: wanting permanent residence later is allowed if you will leave when the temporary stay ends. Working, or studying in a long program, without the right permit is not protected by dual intent.
How we can help
- File the visitor record before the stay ends.
- If status is already lost, say whether restoration is still open, and we do not plan a trip around it.
