If you are a musician or a person employed by a music tour but you have a criminal history, you will likely be inadmissible to enter Canada unless you apply for a permit.
If you are a musician or a person employed by a music tour but you have a criminal history, you will likely be inadmissible to enter Canada unless you apply for a permit.
People travelling to Canada as part of a music tour often wonder if they will be free to travel if they have a past criminal history. Luckily, these people are often able to travel after securing either a Temporary Resident Permit or Criminal Rehabilitation.
If you are an American citizen and you have no criminal history, you are free to travel to Canada. Under some circumstances, depending on what sort of show you’ll be involved in, you may need a work permit but this will likely be specified by the venue at which the show will take place and the nature of your position in Canada.
If you do have a criminal history however, you may be temporarily criminally inadmissible to Canada. However, this inadmissibility can be overcome by applying for a permit.
If you have multiple offences, you will be able to enter Canada but only with a permit. In this case, the permit you can obtain depends on the dates of completion of all the terms of your sentence. If it has been over 5 years since that date, you can apply for Criminal Rehabilitation, a permit which will grant you permanent admissibility to Canada. This permit will however be revoked if you commit another offence. Additionally, Criminal Rehabilitation applications often take approximately a year to process and therefore if you have urgent travel, we also recommend applying for a Temporary Resident Permit.
If it has been less than 5 years since the completion of your sentence, you can apply for a Temporary Resident Permit. This permit will grant you access to Canada on a temporary basis for a specific trip. You can however also apply for a multiple entry TRP which is useful, for instance, if you are a part of a tour which will be entering and exiting Canada several times. These however only grant you temporary admissibility to Canada so if you travel to Canada frequently, you may want to apply for Criminal Rehabilitation as soon as you are eligible.
If you have only one offence on your record and over ten years have passed since the date of completion of all the terms of your sentence, you will be Deemed Rehabilitated simply by the passage of time. However, it can still be good to obtain a Legal Opinion Letter from a Canadian attorney certifying that you are in good legal standing to enter Canada.
FWCanada is pleased to offer all of these services and more. We have successfully assisted many large and small scale performers and their support staff enter Canada and we can do the same for you.
If you are interested in obtaining one of these permits or would like more information about travelling to Canada, please fill out our free online assessment form here.
FWCanada is a Montreal-based immigration law firm that provides professional legal services on Canadian immigration. For more tips and updates on Canadian immigration follow FWCanada on Facebook, Twitter, and Linkedin.
