Hello Members
To apply for Citizenship one has to be present in Canada for 183 days during each of four calendar years that are fully or partially within the six years right before the date of application.
If a person is not physically present for last three months of a year and continue absent till the first four months of the next year, then does the 183 days rule affects the eligibility?
Please clarify.
The 183 days in each of four years presence requirement is based on
calendar years. Thus, for a individual who files in mid-July this year, 2017, that individual meets this particular presence requirement so long as the individual was physically present in Canada 183 days in four of the following calendar years: 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012. Presence 183+ in each of any four of these calendar years meets the requirement.
Thus, a lengthy absence spanning into the next calendar year has no impact on how this rule applies; each calendar year is calculated separately.
Of course, there is nonetheless the total 1460 days within the six preceding year requirement; it can be practically difficult to meet the total requirement if there are lengthy absences in multiple years.
The 183 days X 4 years requirement is probably intended to correspond to tax years for the vast majority of individual persons, recognizing that generally a person is deemed a resident of Canada for CRA filing requirements if the person was present in Canada 183 or more days in a calendar year, triggering the requirement to file a resident tax return for that year (with exceptions; actual filing requirements are variable and in some cases complicated). And thus is a requirement in effect coordinated with the requirement to have met Canadian tax filing obligations for at least four of the relevant six tax years (noting that in some situations, a tax year may be different than the calendar year, but for the vast majority of individual persons, the calendar year and tax year coincide).
That is, the 183 days X 4 years presence requirement is probably intended to, in effect, force prospective citizenship applicants to be obligated (usually) to file a resident return for at least those four years, which in turn would substantially add to the paper trail the individual's life makes, making it easier for the government to verify the individual's actual presence and employment. It is provisions like this which probably underlie the government's confidence in assessing applicant qualifications which enables processing times to now be significantly faster than they have been for a decade or more.
