Advice for New PR - Things to keep as evidence for citizenship application

[hotshot007]

Hello all,

I just received my PR and will be moving to Canada shortly. I was looking on the citizenship forum and it seems getting PR is not the end of CIC delays but actually is the start!

I am hoping to get pointers in terms of what evidence and documents to maintain during the 4 year (hopefully 3!) period before citizenship application. What evidence can I keep that should hopefully allow me to have a routine application and convince CIC about my time in Canada during the period. We are a family of three including one child.

Items I can think of maintaining are flight boarding passes tickets and stamps on passports. Are there other items that can be kept that would convince CIC?

Thank you very much in advance for your help. I understand it will be a long journey, but hopefully it would be a bit easier with a bit of preparation.

Thank you and goodluck to all!

 

[Politren]

Keep in mind that after June last year IRCC has automatic access to the Entries and Exits from the major airports. (This is only for those who have applied after June 10th , 2015)
Don't lose any PR or Passport.
Don't travel to Arabic World countries or China during your PR period.
Don't cross the land border with US and if possible don't apply for any US visa.

If you do all that, and if you declare all your travels absolutely accurately the chances for IRCC to question your physical presence are very very very long shot.

 

[shahbj]

Best advice is not to travel anywhere outside Canada.Go after getting passport where ever.Keep record/proof of your stay in Canada.
Do not commit any crime and live as good Canadian.

 

[Politren]

Best advice is not to travel anywhere outside Canada.Go after getting passport where ever.Keep record/proof of your stay in Canada.
Do not commit any crime and live as good Canadian.

The funny thing is that some interview officer are suspicious also if no travels records are declared. They start to think that the applicant travels by using another undeclared travel document.

 

[McClane]

Some points based on my wife's recent experience (she got an RQ, so all this is just in case and might not be necessary)

- Treat all travel as if you were going to submit an expense report and keep plane tickets and receipts for car rentals and hotels. Scan them and keep them as PDF, as they might fade over time.
- Keep copies of your contracts for apartment rental, hydro, gas, etc.
- If possible, keep your medical care in a single institution, so as to be able to obtain your history quickly, if required.
- Ditto with private stuff like eye exams, dentist, etc.
- This is an overkill and my wife didn't have it, but CIC said credit card and/or bank statements would have helped, too.
- Document every single stamp. Do not trust that you have it there as a reference, because someone can overlap another stamp or they can fade with time. My wife had probably ~50 US stamps (plus Canadian ones) and this was very complicated.

It all seems very subjective. Some of the comments here advise against what my wife had a lot of (visas and land travel to the US) and yet she didn't have much of a problem. There seems to be no consistency across the system, but it's of course better to err on the side of keeping too much documentation.

 

[hotshot007]

Thank you all, can't help with the US visas have had 7 of them with the current one valid for 5 years

By the way I read online that we have to submit tax returns proof also with the application. If we have paid lots of taxes working during the years for a well known organization, isn't that considered a good proof of physical presence?

Also, for children physical proof is also required? Guess that would require getting school attendance reports.

Also for exit/entry trips I read somewhere we can get a report from CSBA. Has anyone have experience sending that report along with their application as further proof of their trip history. After submitting this report does CIC still have doubts?

Anyhow I like the idea of keeping evidence like expense reports. Am planning to PDF all boarding passes, visa stamps, tickets after each trip. I am also going to keep a regular log of all trips undertaken by family in excel. I hope this is sufficient in the end.

Thank you again to all who took time to respond. Really appreciate your comments.

 

[Politren]

Thank you all, can't help with the US visas have had 7 of them with the current one valid for 5 years

By the way I read online that we have to submit tax returns proof also with the application. If we have paid lots of taxes working during the years for a well known organization, isn't that considered a good proof of physical presence?

Also, for children physical proof is also required? Guess that would require getting school attendance reports.

Also for exit/entry trips I read somewhere we can get a report from CSBA. Has anyone have experience sending that report along with their application as further proof of their trip history. After submitting this report does CIC still have doubts?

Anyhow I like the idea of keeping evidence like expense reports. Am planning to PDF all boarding passes, visa stamps, tickets after each trip. I am also going to keep a regular log of all trips undertaken by family in excel. I hope this is sufficient in the end.

Thank you again to all who took time to respond. Really appreciate your comments.

Keep in mind that now IRCC can take automatically all the data from CRA and CBSA (Entries and Exits by Air included). Now they are really efficient to determine who have been here long enough without asking that much extra stuff like before.

 

[cooldoc80]

very informative

thanks guys

 

[itsmyid]

Keep in mind that after June last year IRCC has automatic access to the Entries and Exits from the major airports. (This is only for those who have applied after June 10th , 2015)
Don't lose any PR or Passport.
Don't travel to Arabic World countries or China during your PR period.
Don't cross the land border with US and if possible don't apply for any US visa.

If you do all that, and if you declare all your travels absolutely accurately the chances for IRCC to question your physical presence are very very very long shot.

This is an overkill... tons of people got US visa and traveled to China during PR, no problem with their citizenship application at all
But driving cross border is indeed problematic with many reported cases.

 

[Politren]

This is an overkill... tons of people got US visa and traveled to China during PR, no problem with their citizenship application at all
But driving cross border is indeed problematic with many reported cases.

Make a research for your own records from the last couple of years.
The huge majority of RQed cases have always one of the following
1US visits by land border
2 Visits to Arabic World Countries
3Visits to China.

 

[itsmyid]

Make a research for your own records from the last couple of years.
The huge majority of RQed cases have always one of the following
1US visits by land border
2 Visits to Arabic World Countries
3Visits to China.

I didn't question the land border crossing and Arabic countries - for pretty obvious reasons
But I don't think getting US visa would have any negative impact
As to visiting China - It is well known that many Chinese PRs go back to China for extended period of time ( since the business/job opportunities are much better there, or due to family reasons), and barely making enough time for residency requirements - It is not visiting China that causes the delay, it is visiting China for long period time.

 

[cooldoc80]

are arabic countries visit not a good sign due to security reasons or its due to other factor?

 

[Politren]

I didn't question the land border crossing and Arabic countries - for pretty obvious reasons
But I don't think getting US visa would have any negative impact
As to visiting China - It is well known that many Chinese PRs go back to China for extended period of time ( since the business/job opportunities are much better there, or due to family reasons), and barely making enough time for residency requirements - It is not visiting China that causes the delay, it is visiting China for long period time.

Usually also the main fraud stream of cases also involve Chinese or Arabic networks. IRCC knows that very well cooldoc80.

The likelihood for a grimy face on the interview is when a US visa sticker is present in the passports. Therefore is much better not to have any US visas. In these cases the officers know that the land border is not reliable to make electronic entries in the system and many people used to work in US without any evidence of the fact that they are in US.

But something important needs to be mentioned, all those cases were under the old rules, because CIC was blindfolded in their helplessness to extract any extra information from the other federal agencies. Now for those who have applied after June 10th 2015 is a different story.

 

[sistemc]

Keep language test results, copy is OK, does not need to be originally sealed.
Keep Confirmation of Permanent Residence letter.

 

[Godzilla9]

Make a research for your own records from the last couple of years.
The huge majority of RQed cases have always one of the following
1US visits by land border
2 Visits to Arabic World Countries
3Visits to China.

Maybe I missed something, how can land visit to the US can delay the case, why is it problematic?