Salam Mohamed,
If you've lived 6 consecutive months in the United States (after you turn 18) you will need to submit an FBI police certificate. Check the CIC website on how to apply for that (they also include a link to the FBI web site). I cannot post links here, but here's the text on the CIC web site for police certificates from the US:
"How to obtain a police certificate - United States
Do I need to provide a police certificate when applying for permanent residence?
Yes, Applicants should provide a Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) certificate with fingerprints. State certificates may also be requested. The Visa Office will advise you if state certificates are required in your case.
How and where do I obtain one?
You should:
get a cover letter and fingerprint card from the FBI. You can download these from the FBI website or write to the address below and have them mailed to you.
have fingerprints taken. You can have this done by:
a local police department or
a private fingerprinting business.
(When you have your fingerprints taken, you will need photo identification.)
include a Certified cheque or money order for the fees, payable to the U.S. Treasury
mail the letter, fingerprints and fee payment to:
FBI, Criminal Justice Information Services Division
Attention: SCU, Mod D-2
1000 Custer Hollow Road
Clarksburg, West Virginia 26306
U.S.A.
Processing times are normally between 16 and 18 weeks. The FBI will send you a letter with the results of their record check. That letter will be your police certificate. You should send the letter and any attached documents to the Citizenship and Immigration Canada office processing your file. All police certificates must be originals. Photocopies will not be accepted by our office."
We applied for the FBI certificate for our application. We also applied for police certificates from each state we lived in. (We don't know if London VO requires state clearances, but were advised to get them by our immigration consultant at the time). We checked the web site of each entity (FBI, and each state police department) for their requirements. We submitted our requests in April 2011, and by end of June we had received them all (FBI, and two states).
Since we live in Abu Dhabi, we did the fingerprinting for FBI and required states at the Ministry of Interior (close to Shaykh Zayed mosque). We used the fingerprint forms provided by FBI (downloaded from their site). The FBI also has detailed information on how to carry out the fingerprinting. Make sure to read that to make sure what they/you're doing conforms. Unclear prints might result in a rejection and a request to redo them. We actually included at least four sets of fingerprints for the FBI (for each family member) when we sent them. Since we know of people whose fingerprint cards were rejected for 'unclear' prints, and because the processing time is not short, we figured we'd be better off safe than sorry. It worked out alhamdulillah.
In our case, our immigration consultant submitted our application without the police certificates (which we had applied for but were still waiting for). As soon as we received a file number from CIC, we submitted the police certificates to complete our application. Not sure if that is recommended, but that's what happened with us.
Hope this is helpful. If you have any questions on the details of how we applied for the certificates, please feel free to ask.
Best of luck in your application.
Moe2010 said:
Hi All,
I will be sending my application before end of this week. I am missing one document so far and i am not able to figure out how to get and where to get it from.
I lived in the USA for more than 6 months. This was 9 years back. How can i apply for a police clearance certificate from Dubai and how long it will take to process? Also, what would be a proper justification to provide CIC in my application if i will not include the US PCC in my application?
I look forward to your prompt help.
Thanks,
Mohamed