beeza said:
Hello All,
I am a US citizen who became a Canadian PR in 2007. I applied for citizenship in 2012. I move back to the US on a part-time basis in 2013 for university. I am graduating university next month (August 2016). I have an interview with a citizenship judge on July 19 which I will be attending. I have been maintaining my PR status and I did meet the residency requirements to apply.
Herein lies where I need advice:
I've been accepted to a phd program here in the US and I want to attend the program as the area I am interested in has very little people working in the field. The larger field is mathematics and the more specific field lies within. I have every intention of maintaining ties to Canada. I really want to be Canadian. I am willing to even give up my US citizenship. Does it seem like a lost cause to go and try to convince the judge? I'm not trying to get Canadian citizenship with the intention to never living in Canada again. I genuinely love Canada and it is where I ultimately want to be. I don't want to choose between my career and Canada. I think completing this phd and going back to Canada would be a great thing. I would be able to contribute to Canadian society.
Any advice will help and I already understand returning to the US jeopardized my chances but I wanted to get into a better career so please refrain from telling me I messed up. If I am rejected and lose PR I will apply and start from the beginning.
Convince the Citizenship Judge of what?
The purpose of a CJ hearing is to determine if you met the residency requirement. Primarily that means the hearing is your opportunity to help the CJ see that the evidence you submitted in response to RQ proves you were present in Canada all the days you claimed to be present and the total number of those days (during the four years preceding the date you applied in 2012) is at least 1095.
(There is a small chance of otherwise proving “residency” based on qualitative criteria, but odds are not good for that kind of case.)
Otherwise, the hearing is also about assessing your credibility.
First, clear the table of what is not much relevant:
Giving up U.S. citizenship will accomplish nothing, impress no one. It is irrelevant.
Your PhD ambitions are personal and do not have much if any influence either. While knowledge of Canada and fluency in one of the official languages are required, beyond that there are no intelligence or educational qualifications for Canadian citizenship. Whether you are a stay-at-home parent or an accomplished brain surgeon has no influence on qualifying for Canadian citizenship. In other words, there is NO real prejudice against math-heads, but no preference either.
Since you have not even started a U.S. PhD program as yet, there is no reason at all to make explanations about this in an effort to persuade a Citizenship Judge . . . regarding which, again, the question is what do you think you would be convincing the CJ about?
As someone who applied prior to June 2015, your intentions about living in Canada are not really relevant either. Whatever questions about your case have arisen related to how much you have been abroad since applying, promises about future intentions will have no bearing. There could be incidental discussion about your plans, especially if there is a discussion about how much you have outside Canada (which cannot factor into the residency calculation, but which can factor into the CJ’s assessment of your credibility), but this is more about testing how open and honest you are about who you are, what sort of life you are living, have been living, with the looking-forward parts more or less as credibility markers. Your actual plans are of no accord.
What is relevant:
You must remain eligible as well as having been eligible on the day you applied. To remain eligible, however, merely means you still have valid PR status and have no prohibitions.
The main thing the CJ hearing is for is to determine whether or not, on the date you applied, you met the residency requirement for citizenship. So that will be the focus: the four years preceding that date, in 2012, that you applied for citizenship.
Thus, the main issue: did you have 1095+ days of actual physical presence when you applied? And did you prove this in response to RQ?
If you applied with more than 1095 days of actual physical presence in Canada, and you have submitted objective documentation which proves this, proves that the days you declared you were in Canada you were indeed, in fact, in Canada, what you have been doing since applying is not the issue . . . so long as you have continued to be in compliance with the PR Residency Obligation.
Meeting the residency requirement is what is relevant.
If you applied based on
residency but was short on days actually physically present, that is a different story. A more difficult situation. And made more problematic given the time abroad, which again is not really relevant to the calculation of residency itself but which is relevant to credibility, and relevant to whether your life was
centralized in Canada for at least three years prior to applying. And there is always the
impression made: does your situation give a CJ the
impression you deserve Canadian citizenship. Clue: if it appears you need to explain things in order to make such an impression, odds are you have not and will not. This is not something judges can be convinced about: either they have a positive
impression or they don’t.
Clue: if the CJ does not have a positive impression, your case better be based on more than 1095 days of actual physical presence and your response to RQ better have well-documented, well-proven, you were in fact present in Canada all the days you claim you were.
Given the timeline, and the referral for a CJ hearing, it appears there are some issues involved in your case and it is likely that IRCC has submitted a referral highlighting why you are not qualified and should be denied. Those issues are what matter. So, again, if you had 1095+ days APP in Canada, go focused on helping the CJ to see what evidence you submitted which actually proves that. Cover every month you reported that you were in Canada.
At this stage there is nothing to lose. Personally I would have a lawyer by now but many do not. If you are turned down because you did not apply with 1095 days, or the CJ does not conclude you have proven you were present for at least 1095 days (matter less whether you actually were present for 1095+ days, and much more whether you proved it . . . it is your burden to prove it, and IRCC and the CJ have no obligation to determine how many days you were actually in Canada, but only to assess the evidence submitted to determine whether you met your burden of proving it), you do not become a citizen. That has no effect on your PR status. To keep PR status you still need to comply with the PR RO. That could be difficult attending a full time PhD program abroad.
