News in Toronto Star

esjeness wrote:  GOOD JOB hope someone will hear our voices. it is unfair to put a 48 months penalty on applicants who received RQ.

@esieness thanks for tweeting but please also add jason kenny in your tweets directly as well by doing
@kenneyjason  :)

Thanks Wael and Goli for your nice achievement. Hope that the pressure from media/twitter will result into some improvements.

Other statistic of note in the article:

Each year, 160,000 people receive Canadian citizenship. But the refusal rate has crept up over the past five years, from 1.4 per cent to 3.5 per cent.

This does not indicate the reason behind increased refusals, which in addition to residency issues may be based upon a failure to meet requirements for language, knowledge of Canada, or prohibitions (criminal or other inadmissibility, probation, incarceration, security). My impression is that the majority of refusals are for applicants who fail to meet the language or knowledge of Canada requirements. Even if I am not correct about this, yes indeed, the rate at which CIC is identifying applicants who do not meet the residency requirement is so low that it does not warrant the scope of RQ being imposed -- it is clear that more than double, perhaps four or five times the number of applicants who are eventually denied citizenship due to the failure to meet the residency requirement, are subjected to RQ and the inordinately long RQ process.

While I try to avoid wandering into what-should-be territory, let me say in exception to this that I wonder if there should be a multi-tiered approach to assessing applicants who trigger concerns about their residency qualifications. That is, whether CIC should employ a lesser intrusive and more efficient screening step (or steps) so that applicants with concerns are screened in steps that allow for those raising real questions to be differentiated from those who are more clearly qualified, so that the only the former (those with real questions) bog down the more thorough assessment process (including work of CIC case officers including preparation and referral of case to a CJ for a hearing, in addition to the bottleneck caused by having a limited number of CJs to adjudicate these cases), while the latter (those who, upon a lesser but nonetheless closer examination, are clearly qualified) can be separated and processed more efficiently in a way that does not take nearly so long as it does for the to-be-adjudicated cases.

But, wait, hmmmmm, last year CIC introduced level one screening, and pre-test RQ, and the pre-interview check. And now we learn that there is a step involving a referral for "further examination" from which only a bit more than a fifth of those are selected for RQ.

Looks like CIC has indeed been implementing a multi-tiered assessment process.

OK, sure, we still have not seen how the changes implemented last year will unfold in a practical, real application sense. There is no assurance that the changes will indeed, when fully implemented, when fully adopted and adapted to, and adjusted, accomplish a differentiation which will result in some RQ'd applicants avoiding the long haul (as I have been wont to describe it). My impression is that this is, indeed, a significant part of the agenda behind the adoption of the changes. Others think differently. It will be awhile, perhaps another year or so, before we can see enough of how this unfolds to make a fair assessment of the impact. I will not make a hard forecast that this will successfully alleviate much of the problem, but I hope it will, recognizing, however, that for those given RQ who are not separated, those who remain designated for a hearing with the CJ following the test and documents check and interview, for those applicants it is hard to foresee anything less than even longer delays.

In any event, note the following observation made, in this Toronto Star article:

According to the immigration department, about 60,000 citizenship applications were referred for further examination between May 7 and Sept. 28, 2012. Of those applicants, 11,000 were asked to fill out the questionnaires.

Consider what has been shared with us regarding the new procedures, including especially OB 407, a copy of the File Requirements Checklist, and some internal memos from CIC. What we know does not illuminate when or how a portion of the very substantial number of applicants referred for further examination (60,000 in less than six months last year) are in turn given RQ (slightly over 20 percent, 11,000 indicated as given RQ from the 60,000 subjected to further investigation).

Reading between the lines some, but not at too much of a stretch I think, my impression is that the risk indicators specified in the File Requirements Checklist (including concerns triggered by FOSS entries, including NCBs) trigger the "further examination" and not necessarily RQ. I take this to be good news for many (including me), that just because we report self-employment, for example, there appears to be a good chance we will not be given RQ (depending, of course, on circumstances, record, history, results of that "further investigation"), even though we will probably see some significant delay before being scheduled for the test and interview.

I probably do not have this right in a number of respects, let alone precisely so. But it is my impression that something along these lines is the intended process. This makes sense. While some think otherwise, the evidence is nearly overwhelming that as a general rule CIC wants qualified applicants to proceed to the grant of citizenship (oath) as efficiently as they can manage while at the same time protecting the integrity of Canadian immigration and citizenship. It makes more sense that CIC is pursuing changes which will improve the process in this regards. Of course, this makes it all the more frustrating for those who are indeed qualified but who nonetheless are swept onto the wrong side of process, especially given the longer and longer and longer processing times this group is being subjected to.

SuperDude,

Actual backlog numbers and RQ numbers will soon come to light sometime this year 2013.

Kenney's office can't hide the numbers for too long.

Canada's parliment is commencing on January 28th.

Next Elections in Canada is on 2015.

Liberals and NDP's "do" care about our voting rights.

For conservatives it's time to give some answers.