dual residence status and citizenship

Your application cannot be refused just because you are a US Green card holder. However your application has a good chance for it getting delayed, because CIC needs to make certain that you have actually been present in Canada for at least 1095 of the four year period before you signed your application. Having a PR status in the US understandably can cause doubt for CIC that you have actually lived in Canada as you will have claimed. 

Edited by Beaver - 08 Jul 2010 at 3:36pm

Ditto Beaver.

I suspect it may make a difference which came first . . . but it sounds like you obtained the Green Card after landing as a PR in Canada, so, yeah, that triggers questions about where you really are putting your citizenship roots.

But as Beaver indicates, that is cause for more scrutiny, not a denial. The question then is proof of actually being in Canada.

A problem underlying this, though, is how easy it is to cross back and forth across the Canadian/U.S. border and skepticism there might be about representations as to time on the Canadian side. If you can back up your time in Canada with documentation, nothing to worry about except the delay inherent in the RQ process.

Just to be clear, I was sharing my observations based on . . . well a lot of sources but not my personal experience. I am still a PR myself, anxiously looking forward to the process of obtaining Canadian citizenship.

It is not certain that you will get RQ in these circumstances. It is one of the things, though, that seems likely to trigger questions, and for the most part (from reports I have seen in conjunction with the information CIC provides), questions tend to push an app to RQ.

To some extent it is a holdover from the old system, in which meeting the PR's residency obligation was in larger part subjective (intent to permanently reside in another country could cause a PR to lose Canadian residency), and likewise the criteria for citizenship included a more dominant subjective component (similarly, evidence of intent to live elsewhere could render one ineligible for citizenship); but it is also still a valid evidentiary indicator under the current system: becoming a permanent resident elsewhere indicates a substantial probability that the individual did indeed live elsewhere and thus a more thorough investigation of their meeting the qualifying requirements is warranted.


Edited by dpenabill - 13 Jul 2010 at 12:48am