I was reading some posts from few years ago and it was rather common for people to get RQed for just about everything. Does this still happen these days? I'm a bit concerned because most of my three years I spent studying.
I concur in the other observations that a qualified applicant who meets the physical presence requirement has little or no reason to apprehend that there will be any serious issue or problem in regards to their physical presence.
I would qualify this, however, by adding that it is a good idea to wait to apply with a decent margin over the minimum. A month is good for most. Some may want to wait longer, as I did for personal reasons related to migrating my business to Canada from abroad. While many in the forum suggest a week to ten days is enough, for most waiting a month plus a bit should be easy and that in turn will typically make the job of verifying physical presence easier for the total stranger bureaucrats who process the application.
In any event, in particular, for qualified applicants who apply with a decent margin over the minimum, and otherwise properly follow the instructions, there should be little risk of full blown RQ these days. Moreover, all RQ requires, even the full blown RQ, are copies of records that people should be keeping generally, so at worst (for the qualified applicant), apart from the inconvenience of gathering and submitting the documentation requested, all RQ does is delay the grant of citizenship.
Re: Is RQ Still Common?
Bears repeating that there is no indication that being a student, rather than employed, will trigger residency/presence concerns. So there is no particular cause for you to be concerned about the extent to which RQ is still being used, or the extent to which there is a risk an application becomes a presence/residency case if IRCC identifies cause to question an applicant's physical presence (like a significant omission or discrepancy between what the applicant reports in their travel history versus what IRCC sees in other sources, the CBSA travel history looming large here).
That is, probably no need for you to have concerns about whether RQ is still common.
It has been awhile, a fairly long while now, since we have seen any anecdotal reports of full-blown RQ. I have not been watching all the threads sufficiently to assess how frequently IRCC is making lesser RQ-related requests, and it is not clear that IRCC continues to regularly use even the RQ-lite form to make such requests.
Full-blown RQ was indeed very common for applications made based on the previous residency requirement (thus applications made until June 2015), in large part because there were so many applying based on three years of
*residency* while short of 1095 days physical presence. Additionally, for a period of time in 2012, for example, approximately one in every four applicants was getting full-blown RQ; but that was during a period of time when any period of self-employment or unemployment would trigger RQ.
In the meantime the capacity of CBSA to capture and store, and facilitate access to individual travel records, has expanded dramatically in the last decade, and in conjunction with the change to a physical presence requirement this has reduced the extent to which there are questions or concerns related to what is asked in a Residency Questionnaire. And in general, these days we are all leaving a paper and digital trail that makes it far easier for IRCC to identify if there is a "
reason-to-question-residency."
There are exceptions, of course. Cannot be sure whether
@phewphew's application will be processed as a presence/residency case, or not, but there are indications that is where their application could be headed. See discussion here:
https://www.canadavisa.com/canada-i...physical-presence.841198/page-2#post-10796153 . . . but that involves an application made based on exactly 1095 days physical presence. NOT a good idea. And it also appears that something likely triggered increased scrutiny.
But
@phewphew does not, not so far, report getting RQ'd. Even though it is quite apparent that their physical presence is the focus of additional inquiry. Just four or six years ago this would have most likely involved RQ. Has something changed in how IRCC approaches residency/presence concerns?
In the past I would have been engaged in the ATI process to get more internal information about policies and practices at IRCC. I have greatly reduced the extent to which I do the research (getting old and hoping others here would take on the task of doing the homework), so I cannot say much beyond what can be discerned from current IRCC website information and anecdotal reporting in open source forums like this. That said, that acknowledged, there are numerous enough reports of applicants waiting on non-routine physical presence assessments, that in conjunction with known policies and practices at IRCC, it is readily apparent that if and when IRCC has physical presence concerns they are conducting additional investigations into the applicant's presence/residency. Some of this will be IRCC officials conducting additional inquiries, while some of it will involve a referral to CBSA for investigation by its NSSD branch.
I do not know, but I strongly suspect that is where things are in processing
@phewphew's application, in some phase of additional investigation.
And among numerous anecdotal reports of delays in processing, the prospect looms large that many of these have been referred into a path for non-routine investigation of physical presence.
So my impression, albeit an unconfirmed impression, is that these days IRCC is relying more on its investigatory tools than RQ.
Which brings this back around to
qualified applicants who properly and accurately provided information, including travel history, in their application: if there is nothing to hide, there is no reason to worry. That may sound glib, but there really should be no reason to worry when all an investigation will find will be consistent with the applicant's account of physical presence, and the applicant did in fact meet the requirements.
Again, with some exceptions.
@phewphew, for example, might want to consider withdrawing the current application and making a new one. But that is mostly about having applied with NO margin at all and how long it might take if the case goes to a hearing with a Citizenship Judge.