Joint vs separate citizenship applications

cool_alex wrote: Need your help with deciding whether my wife, son, and I are better off applying for citizenship together or separately. My assumptions/considerations are: 1) Unlike them, I did a lot more trips outside of Canada in the last 3 years and if I am right with my assumptions, it makes me a suspect for a residency questionnaire. In that case I will be facing an extra delay, but will it also affect their processing times? 2) On the other hand, CIC may have a strong preference for the family members applying together and I think I may have seen something along those lines on some of the threads here. True or false? Appreciate your sharing knowledge and experience!

Edited by SARABC - 07 Jan 2013 at 5:42pm

cool_alex wrote: SARABC wrote: Hi there, My husband, two kids & I applied together Feb.2012. My husband had three trips each one was a week long to Europe while me and the kids have never left Canada since landing.  Unfortunately my husband got RQd in Nov.2012 and I am seriously considering splitting our applications as wait times seem crazy. If I were given the chance to reapply today I would definitely apply separately. Cheers, Sarah    Thanks for sharing your story, much appreciated! So it is possible to split the applications after submission? More importantly: was RQ sent to your husband only, or to all 4 of you?

Edited by Vancan2012 - 07 Jan 2013 at 9:31pm

cool_alex wrote: Need your help with deciding whether my wife, son, and I are better off applying for citizenship together or separately. My assumptions/considerations are: 1) Unlike them, I did a lot more trips outside of Canada in the last 3 years and if I am right with my assumptions, it makes me a suspect for a residency questionnaire. In that case I will be facing an extra delay, but will it also affect their processing times? 2) On the other hand, CIC may have a strong preference for the family members applying together and I think I may have seen something along those lines on some of the threads here. True or false? Appreciate your sharing knowledge and experience!

This alludes to the fact that the same facts can have opposite effects in different cases. This is why it is so difficult to extrapolate definitive implications from how an individual case is handled.

The idea that CIC may have questions if members of the same family do not apply together comes from the appendix in CP 5 Residence, as it is one of the factors or risk indicators listed among those relative to assessing declared residency. In fact, it is a little broader than that, and refers to members of the same household.

This does not appear to be on the level one screening list of risk indicators so is probably not a significant factor. I believe there are many, many disparate factors which can have some influence . . . and again, actually some may have a negative influence in one context versus a positive influence in another context. Other than the big, obvious, direct factors (like applying with less than 1095 days actual presence; failing to report a significant amount of time abroad; working abroad since becoming a PR; among others), I believe that it is how all the pieces look and come together, how the details fit into the whole picture. So, when a particular detail fits well into one applicant's story, that can be a positive factor, but that same kind of detail can have negative influence if it does not fit all that well into a different applicant's story.

One thing I used to emphasize a great deal, but lately have been distracted by other issues, is the extent to which IT DEPENDS, so much depending on this or that and the other, and each depending on each other in turn. IT DEPENDS.

Given how, it appears, anything that knocks an application off track seems to really knock the processing timeline off track, way off track (and the regular track is inordinately slow as is), contemplating the capacity to split applications submitted jointly is really no recourse if things go awry (RQ say) for one of the applicants . . . everyone will get bogged down.

Whether to file together or separately is largely something the individual needs to decide based on all the particulars of their situation in conjunction with the particulars of the other person's circumstances.

Same household filing separately may raise questions. But, if the circumstances for the respective applicants entail significant differences, that too may raise questions . . . and, again, if problems (like RQ) affects one, it is likely to seriously delay all.

No simple guidelines that I know about, other than what should be obvious: a couple with children who immigrated to Canada together and have remained in Canada together and for whom one has not traveled abroad significantly more or less than the other, filing together is most likely better. If, though, one has been outside Canada more, one has had work outside Canada, or . . . any significant difference in the underlying facts . . . that pushes the decision more toward filing separately.

Consulting with a lawyer is a good idea. I do not have any recommendations (I only know one Canadian immigration lawyer personally, and that is based on a brief interactino years ago).

Primary consideration is not that complicated, however: to what extent are the key factors the same, different? (Dates and duration of absences; dates of PR status; residential addresses.) The more the same, the more likely it is better to apply together. The more differences, the more likely it would be to apply separately.