Immigrating to Canada, probably via Marriage, need help!

My fiance is a born Canadian citizen. I am in Canada living with her at the moment, still within the 6 month original border visa. We are happily engaged and will be getting married soon. I need to know the best way of going about my immigration to Canada, with a few concerns on some specifics that I would hope someone might be able to assist me with.

-I would like to live in Canada during the process. Not being able to work is okay, she makes a very good amount of money and can support me completely while we wait for my residency to go through. I also have a fair pocket of cash saved from my job in the states, so that is fine as well.

-I fear for my background check. I was arrested for a small misdemeanor when I was... 17 maybe? And I'm worried this will be on my record or something. Is the background check only for felonies? Or will this effect my residency application?

-Where do I go to begin the application process after I'm married, and what will I need?

Any and all info on this would be extremely helpful. I'm very confused and I just want to be able to live here legally with my fiance more than anything.

A good site for Canadian Immigration information is http://roadtocanada.com

I'll briefly give you a synopsis of what you will need to do.

Get married ASAP, before your 6 months are up. You may need to get a visitor record to extend your legally permitted visit beyond the 6 months. The folks at Road To Canada are much better at explaining that one.

Do the OUT-land applicaton process, NOT in-land! Yes, even though you are In Canada, the OUT of Canada process only takes about 6 months. The IN Canada process takes about 18 to 24 months. Once your application is approved, you can then just drive to the border and flagpole back in to "land".

You will have to get the State and FBI record checks to include with your application anyway, so we won't know what shows up on them until you get the results back. Depending what the charges were, and if they show up on your record check, will depend if Immigration Canada will deem you inadmissable or not. If they do show up on your record check, you may need to also endure the Rehabiliation paperwork, which is currently taking 18 to 24 months to process. They will put your immigration application on hold until the Rehab has been completed.

Depending which province you're in will determine how quickly you can get this all started. Ontario for some reason takes about 3 to 6 months just to issue marriage certificates, and you can't send in your application until you have that.

For the forms and whatnot, see the Immigration Canada website
http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/index.asp

Click the link "how to bring your family" then "Family Class... Spouses"

Once again, Road To Canada is an excellent source of information for Canadian Immigration. This site here is primarily for Canadians travelling/immigrating outside of Canada.

They don't really care about anything that happened before you were 18 unless it was really serious, it depends what comes back in your background checks as you basically have to provide a criminal history record check from everywhere you lived since you were 18 for more than six months, IIRC.

Unless, like my husban who has a juvenile record and the county mis-filed it as adult when they "upgraded" from paper filing to microfiche. And they "can't find the original" so they say they can't fix it .

It shows up on all record checks as an adult charge, making him inadmissable. But, it was a juvenile charge from when he was 16.