Allawy
I was at the Hamilton CIC office on the same day as you for my citizenship test and interview (August 17). The test went well (20 correct out of 20) but I did not get approved on the spot at the interview. My case was handled by the guy, not the lady. Long story short, he said that first he would have to order a CBSA report of my entries (and exits?) in order to verify that my same-day trips to the US match what I have declared in the Online Residence Calculator. This because I'm applying with 1462 days physical presence, barely over the required minimum of 1460, and he said he wants to make sure I don't fall short. I told him I have only taken 8 same-day driving trips to the Buffalo, New York, with the exact dates declared. No overnight absences, no overseas trips in the past four years. Per the new rules, same-day trips don't count as days of absence: your day began and ended in Canada.
Anyway, he still wanted to verify my entries with a CBSA report, so I have no choice but to wait. He said the CBSA report should take about a week. It's been 8 days now since that interview last week, and my status still shows IN PROCESS. I have no idea how long my case will take. I really hate 'indefinite' waits.
What really bugs me is that I get the feeling if my case had been handled by the female officer, she would have approved me right then and there. Before I was called in by the guy, I was sitting right next to the door of the female officer and I overheard her first two interviews. They were both very short and she was laughing her way through them. I was the second person to be called in by the guy, and in the time it had taken him to interview his first applicant, the lady had already been through two interviews.
I did not get the sense that the lady officer was as meticulous as the guy in checking documents and all. My interview took almost 30 minutes and the guy practically asked me all the questions in the application forms all over again, as if he'd never read my file. Then he took a long hard look at my now-expired passport, which is an old passport and kept asking all sorts of questions about my early years in the US as a student under that passport, none of which was relevant to the citizenship application.
For example he asked me why he didn't see an initial entry stamp for my first entry to the US some ten years ago. I told him US Immigration didn't stamp my passport at that time, they just stamped my old I-94 which I no longer have. He gave me skeptical looks like as if to say he did not really believe me, but then had to drop the matter because it is technically irrelevant to the application.
I felt a bit frustrated at the end of the interview at not getting a final decision so I couldn't help telling the officer that I thought the CBSA reports would have been ordered by the time we got to the interview. I also told him that if I had known a CBSA report had yet to be ordered, I would have ordered it myself and brought it to the interview. He said CIC does not order a CBSA report automatically for everyone. It has to be ordered manually by the case officers. Kinda makes you envy Australia where citizenship officers have access to electronic entry/exit records at their fingertips, with just a few clicks at their desk computers. In Canada, requests have to be made from one department to another, with the applicant's consent first. What a rotten bureaucracy.
So ... IN PROCESS ... till the end of time.
. I am getting a little nervous as I don't have much time left and I am having trouble remembering all the dates and names from history. I have practised with numerous online tests.
