Absence AFTER application?

Oh I just realised something.

huh that is the very first time I heard that....I looked up PR conditions before I left and it says officially that to maintain PR you must reside in Canada for 2 years within a 5 year period....which I have? So I am shocked by what you say.....where did you get this info please so I can check into it?

The information provided about being away from the country for longer than six months on a PR is completely incorrect. No such rule exists. To maintain PR, you must be present in Canada for two out of every five years (rolling five years). If you want to remain out of the country for longer than six months, that's your business (as long as you meet residency requirements).

Having said that, the fact that you have been away from Canada for so long may raise some red flags during the Citizenship process and may cause questions to be asked about whether you intend to make Canada your home in the future. I think you should be prepared to receive an RQ. (I'll leave it to someone else to comment on RQ time frames.) The fact that you need to return to the UK soon won't help. Another option that some might suggest is that you withdraw your citizenship application and submit it again once you have returned to live in Canada permanently and have accumulated sufficient residency days.

Again, I'll leave it to a more experienced member to comment on your options. However the six month bit relating to PR is definitely wrong.

Crocus - Is your PR card still valid? (i.e. when does it expire?)

I believe you are OK but ONLY so long as you were honest in your initial application for citizenship -- if you honestly completed the residency calculation you submitted, that is, that you did, indeed, honestly list your time away from Canada. If you were honest about your absences you should be OK. In contrast, if in that form you misrepresented your absences from Canada (including by omission) that is problematic. It appears you probably did fudge this, since you say you made the application "as if" you were in Edmonton. I wince. Misrepresentation is a serious matter.

This is not about what your residential "address" was (that is often a matter of personal election and while it must be a reasonable place given your circumstances and ties, it does not always correspond to the physical location one might be even for relatively long periods of time) but about "trips" outside Canada. You could have filed your application based on your permanent address in Canada but still have honestly reported your most recent trip abroad. If that is what you did, good, great actually because I would have thought that might trigger the RQ but if you have been scheduled for the test that means, as I understand it, that you have already passed the "assessment" of your qualifications for citizenship.

If you did not honestly report that trip abroad, I think you have a serious problem. I don't think that problem necessarily goes away if you return and take the test and get to take the oath of a citizen. It will forever be there, your citizenship will forever be predicated on a misrepresentation, and thus always subject to revocation.

The rest of what follows is based on the assumption you did not honestly report your absence from Canada in the residency calculation:
(If you did report the absence and made the app as if you were residing in Edmonton, I think you can ignore what follows.)

Probably a pretty good chance, perhaps even an excellent chance, you could slide by on this. There is little reason for CBSA to flag you for a residency investigation upon your re-entry into Canada (no idea either where this supposed "six months" rule comes from, but I am pretty sure it is simply not true; even if a six month absence would often trigger increased scrutiny upon returning to Canada, your explanation and absence for less than two years falls well within the PR residency requirements so should not evoke an investigation or report). And, again, being scheduled for the test suggests that the assessment phase is complete.

So you very well could stroll past the issue without a hassle. Not without anxiety however. If, for example, CBSA did decide to take a much closer look and in the process it became apparent to CIC that there was a significant discrepancy between what you reported in your residency calculation and your actual absences from Canada, BOOM, problems, serious problems, obviously a denial of the citizenship app for misrepresentation (even though given what you have said, you probably otherwise did qualify), possible criminal prosecution, possible revocation of PR and removal from Canada, and so on.

Please, for your own benefit, do not dig yourself in any deeper if they do happen to open this can of worms; going forward be honest. If you are honest, there is a very good chance that they may either re-assess your qualifications for citizenship, focus on residency (for which it seems, from your timeline, you should be okay since you were out of Canada less than a year out of the four years immediately preceding the date of your application), or because of the misrepresentation simply deny the application in which case you will have to file again and of course given your absence for more than a year it will be another three years before you qualify. My impression is that they are relatively forgiving, even generous, so long as they are impressed you really are permanently settled in Canada and but for one or two indiscretions that you will be honest going forward. No guarantee but I believe, if you are forthright and forthcoming, this is the more likely outcome.

Albeit, yes, you could face denial of the app, proceedings to revoke PR and removal, even criminal prosecution.

This is not the sort of thing you want to play games with or "fudge." To the extent you already have, that's history, but going forward it is time to do things right.



Edited by dpenabill - 08 Mar 2010 at 2:41pm