Middle East applicants

Hi,

Overall, I agree with the cautionary observation by TD123. Indeed, in general, when dealing with a bureaucracy (and CIC is among Canada's largest bureaucracies), it is almost always best to follow the instructions, stay-within-the-lines one might say. Only go beyond the formalities if and when it is clear there is a perceptible benefit to be gained at minimal risk of a detrimental effect. Sure, sometimes there is very little risk of causing a problem, in which case a small chance of a benefit may tip the scales toward doing that extra thing.

CIC in particular approaches application processing in a largely checklist manner; to the extent CIC looks beyond the checklist items, that is usually to consider negative factors, detrimental information.

Overall, no need to include the additional documentation, and probably better to not include it.

CanadaCitizen wrote: I have continuous employment in Canada and provable with ROEs, T4, NOAs. Shall I send those with my application form and also copy of all pages of my passport. I do have non-cancelled gulf visa, but sending additional documents .. will that help speeding my application? Any advise. I heard a lot of changes are happening recently with regards to the way the applications are being processed.

Short response:
With a strong employment history, a decent margin of actual presence above the 1095 day threshold, and an application done carefully, accurately, and completely, there is little or no reason to include any extra documentation with the application.

The work permit is probably not a factor in whether pre-test RQ gets issued.

The work permit is probably something the interviewer, in the documents check interview (attendant the test usually), will examine and it may be a factor in the overall assessment. If, however, your case otherwise falls well within the parameters of a routine case (and your employment history appears to be such that it should), that is not likely to cause a problem, not likely to result in RQ, unless CIC considers it a risk indicator for which RQ is usually (or always) issued.

Thus, additional documents are not likely to make a difference. While it is likely the work permit will be examined, and considered, in the course of the interview, it is most likely it will either not trigger a problem or RQ, or it will automatically trigger RQ.

CIC does not disclose (to the extent it can keep it secret) what criteria it applies. Moreover, what criteria is considered, and to what extent, tends to change from time to time.

My best guess is that if everything else is in order, and there is no other reason to question your travel declarations, the work permit should not cause a problem, not result in RQ. But there is no guarantee of that.

In either event, however, the inclusion of additional documents with your application is NOT likely to make a difference.

It is worth noting and emphasizing, as well, that with a strong employment history, and readily documented address history, and an accurate declaration of all travel in the residency calculation, the qualified applicant does not need to worry about the ultimate decision even if RQ is issued. Most RQ'd applicants are still, eventually, granted citizenship. And, going forward, it appears that being issued RQ will not be the problem or take so long as it has in the past.

In other words: you have little or no reason to worry about how this will go.   




Longer Explanation For These Observations:

No Guaranteed Way to Avoid RQ
There is no guaranteed way to avoid RQ. Anyone can be issued RQ. But for the qualified applicant even getting RQ should not be a big concern.

Going forward, my sense is that RQ will be less of a problem than it has been in the past, particularly relative to RQ'd applicant processing in the last three to five years. I cannot be certain of this, of course, and RQ will still result in a significantly longer timeline, and some RQ'd applicants will still encounter a more problematic and much longer process than other RQ'd applicants.

Overall, though, on one hand there is not much point in going too far out of one's way in an effort to eliminate the risk of RQ, while on the other hand the qualified applicant, particularly one who can well document his or her regular employment working at a location in Canada, has little to worry about even if he or she is issued RQ.



Including Additional Documentation With Application
This has been oft discussed. There is no definitive answer, no for-certain conclusions about whether or not including additional documents with an application can make a difference.

We do know, however, that RQ can still be issued, and has been issued to applicants, despite having included the equivalent of a full RQ submission.

Common-sense also informs us that including a large amount of additional documentation runs the risk of being counter-productive, such as in potentially raising more questions than it resolves. (Such as "why is this applicant so concerned that he has included a lot of extra, not asked for documentation?")

The latter alludes to the real question: to what extent will including additional documentation risk a negative reaction?

If the individual applying believes including extra documents runs little or no risk of inviting questions or problems, but might make a positive difference, then why not include the extra documents?

Again, though, we do not know the answer to that.

What I did: I did include extra documents, but kept what I submitted to a small amount. In particular, I submitted copies of my Notices of Assessment for every year since I landed. This did not hurt my case, obviously, since my timeline from date of application to date of oath was barely eight months. But I do not know if it made a positive difference either. Maybe. Maybe not. Person sitting next to me at the oath ceremony got his oath in just seven months, and he did not submit any extra documents.

Including T4s might, similarly, be a reasonable approach.

It may be worth noting, however, that the application form has again been amended (since the last time I previously looked at it and multiple times since I applied in mid-2013). For a long time, the item about work and education history included a general instruction to include documentation, grammatically referring to proof for both employment and education, while the Guide and the Checklist only referred to education records. Now, today, the work and eduction item in the application form specifically refers only to education records to be included.

I would also note that for me, the reason I included the NoAs is that I was self-employed only, a factor which significantly increases the risk of RQ (and which for a time, for applications submitted between mid-2011 through to sometime in early 2013, was nearly if not absolutely a definite trigger for RQ). I was fully expecting RQ, and included the NoAs just hoping they might tip the scales (by the time I applied it had become apparent that not all self-employed applicants were getting RQ).

In contrast, for you, I presume you will be listing an employer who CIC can readily, easily, look up, to confirm there is such an employer. (There are indications that for some applicants CIC may do queries, including internet queries such as in Canada411 or a general search engine like Google, to verify information regarding the applicant.) So there may be little or nothing to be gained by including additional documents like NoAs or T4s.     



Risk of RQ relative to ME work permit
I do not know how much risk of RQ there is due to the non-cancelled permit.

As I said in previous posts, it is a factor, meaning it can be a factor, but such factors are undoubtedly considered in context. I doubt it is a factor at the level one screening step, in which CIC decides whether to issue a pre-test RQ or not.

In particular, my understanding is that this is not something which is asked about in the application itself. Item 6 asks whether the applicant has citizenship in any other countries (and of course for the vast majority, anyone other than a stateless person, the answer is yes, with at least citizenship in one other country, one's home country), or has permanent residence status in any other country (and, as previously noted, a U.S. Green Card is, for example, a significant risk factor). But I do not recall any question about status to live or work temporarily in another country.

As such, the work permit probably does not elevate the risk of being issued pre-test RQ.

Note: relative to including copy of passport pages with the application, this is one of those circumstances in which you might be increasing your risk of RQ by doing so.

Thus, while the work permit is a factor, it is not one which arises until the test-interview documents check step, until the interviewer actually examines the pages of your travel documents.

Again, I do not know, and I doubt anyone else here knows, to what extent the uncancelled work visa in a passport elevates the risk of RQ at that stage. Overall, unless there is something in the application or CIC's records about the applicant that raises a question, at this step the interviewer is mostly engaged in a verification exercise, verifying identity and that the travel documents are consistent with declared travel history, and to some extent asking questions to see whether or not there are any obvious inconsistencies or incongruities.

Thus, while I have said the ME work permit is a factor, if everything is in order, if there is nothing which otherwises raises some question about the applicant's residency declarations (travel dates, residential address, work history, and such), and CIC has no reason to suspect the applicant has any other travel documents not being presented, the presence of the work permit in a passport or other travel document is probably not something which will trigger a problem or RQ.

Probably.

It is possible that it is a trigger for either RQ or one of the alternative requests for additional documents. If so, if it is a trigger, it will have that effect regardless of what else you submit or say. I doubt that it is an automatic trigger as such (otherwise, I believe, they would ask in the application about status to live or work in another country, like the application does ask if the applicant has permanent resident status in any other country). But what CIC identifies as reason to conduct further inquiries, or to issue RQ, is not public information. We only know about some of the criteria based on previous practices (as was reflected in an appendix to the operational manual CP 5 Residence, which is no longer publicly available, and which indeed may no longer be applicable) in conjunction with some information obtained through the Access to Information process, which is also to some extent stale now (as you suggest, there have been and continue to be major changes at CIC regarding citizenship application processing).