PMM said:
Except the Appendix A checklist for Buffalo states:
"12. POLICE CERTIFICATES AND CLEARANCES
• Original police certificates of good conduct or clearances, from each country/
state/territory in which you and everyone in your family aged 18 years or over
have lived since reaching the age of 18.
• Submit original fingerprints directly to the authorities conducting the police
checks
• If you have obtained police certificates from countries where the authorities will
forward results directly to us, attach a brief explanatory note to your application.
PMM
In order to avoid all ambiguities, it is all the more reason
why CIC took the pains to be more explicit for applicants to better understand the process
by providing the following instructions to the usual FAQs (This is for the Regular App.):
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. Applicants
may also be requested to provide
State certificates.
From:
http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/information/security/police-cert/north-america/united-states.asp
First, the question posed above on the CIC web page is NOT: Do I need to provide police certificate
s? It’s not pluralized; it says “a police certificate.”
Then it went on to say, “Yes. Applicants should provide . . .
There is a difference between “should” and “may.”
The FBI Clearance is a “must” that applicants have to provide. Hence, the verb “should,” which means that the FBI clearance is an obligation on the part of the applicant.
Then there is a period, putting an end to that sentence and its obligation.
The next sentence stipulates that:
It is up to Buffalo to request State Certificates later on in the process. Hence, the verb “may,” which indicates a likelihood or possibility of this from Buffalo. Thus, the
state police certificate is NOT an initial obligation from the applicant –
The FBI clearance is the obligation – “
should.”
So, even though it is not an initial obligation like the FBI clearance,
an applicant can always choose to send in all of the U.S. state police certificates pertaining to them - well and good,
but those state certificates might end up being redundant, if Buffalo never needed them in the first place. And,
this is what many applicants have done unbeknownst to them that they had the option of not sending in those state police certificates unless Buffalo makes the request.
It is best to send in the obligable FBI clearance and leave it up to Buffalo to see whether they might need an applicant’s state police certificates. An application will never be rejected if state certificates are not sent because it is not an initial obligation from the applicant.
In my case (Regular App), I could have sent in the FBI clearance plus 3 state certificates. However, Buffalo requested that I send in only the FBI’s. And, Buffalo has done the same for other regular process applicants who applied since 2004, by requesting only the FBI, and their request to me was exactly the pages from this link: http://geo.international.gc.ca/can-am/buffalo/visas/police_certificate-en.asp#how_us
Note how Buffalo prints what they need (from the last link) – “MUST obtain police clearance from the FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION (FBI).” Why the need for all of those BOLD letters by Buffalo? Are they trying to say something? I think they are. FBI will do initially. Wait until they ask for state clearances. They might, or they might not.
Now to the Appendix A check list.
Appendix A check list is a general checklist for all documents to be put together as quoted herein:
STEP 1. GATHER YOUR DOCUMENTS
Collect the documents you need to support your application. A full list of these documents is included in Appendix A: Checklist found in the Visa Office-specific instructions for your location.
And in item 12, it states:
Original police certificates of good conduct or clearances, from each country/state/territory in which you and everyone in your family aged 18 years or over have lived since reaching the age of 18.
The listing of
“country/state/territory” under item 12 is legally termed as
“ejusdem generis.”
Ejusdem generis is Latin [meaning]
"of the same kind," [and] used to interpret loosely written statutes. Where a law lists specific classes of persons or things and then refers to them in general, the general statements only apply to the same kind of persons or things specifically listed.
Thus the legal doctrine of “ejusdem generis” has been used to clarify ambiguous language in legalities.
Example of “ejusdem generis:” [Let's say] a law refers to automobiles, trucks, tractors, motorcycles and other motor-powered vehicles. ["Vehicles"] would not include airplanes, since the list was of land-based transportation.
The above definition of “ejusdem generis is cited from:” http://dictionary.law.com/default2.asp?typed=ejusdem+generis&type=1&submit1.x=59&submit1.y=10
So in our case, the first word in that listing is Country, then state, and it ends with territory. A country is defined as a nation or a State, or the territory of a nation or state; land. We take our cue from the word, country. A country is seen as a single entity whether that country is a Federation of States like the U.S., or whether the country is seen as a unitary state like the State of Bahrain.
The U.S. – a federation of different states is a country.
The State of Bahrain is a country.
Puerto Rico, which is a U.S. territory, is a country.
State of Eritrea is a country.
The Independent State of Papua New Guinea is a country.
State of Israel is a country.
State of Kuwait is a country.
Federal Republic of Germany is a country.
The United Kingdom (U.K.) of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is a country.
The British Virgin Islands, a U.K. territory is also a country.
So, the word, “state” in the checklist is not referring specifically to states within the U.S., but to any country (land) that is also recognized as an independent state.
Thus, the checklist's "state" refers to
an independent state that was once part of or under the rule of another (bigger) nation or territory, but is now seen/recognized as a separate country by the rest of the world.
The states within the United States of America are not recognized as such.
I am not a lawyer; I am only trying to help those who come after me in the immigration process, in understanding the language of CIC backed by my experiences as well as the experiences of others.
