Living outside Canada for 3+ years with PR and Canadian spouse

[lesintheuk]

Hello,
I am Canadian and my husband is a UK citizen with Canadian PR status. He obtained PR status in December 2009. For several reasons we did not settle in Canada but have stayed in the UK since then. He would now like to apply for his Canadian citizenship.
I understand that time spent outside of Canada counts towards residency, as long as he has been living with me (which he has) and therefore he should pass his residency requirements. However, what I don't understand is how to prove this on the citizenship application? It simply asks how long you have resided in Canada and your various addresses, but it doesn't appear to require any proof? Should we just send the proof that we are married and have lived together since that time, regardless, or is there a separate application / proof / checklist that I have not seen?
Finally, this is all under the assumption that he can apply for citizenship while still living abroad? Is that even possible or must we be physically living in Canada for him to become a citizen?
Many thanks in advance, Leslie

 

[scylla]

Your husband does not qualify for citizenship.

The time he spent outside of Canada with you counts towards retaining his PR status. It does not count towards citizenship.

To qualify to apply for citizenship your husband must physically live in Canada for three out of four years before applying.

 

[lesintheuk]

Oh, I see. For some reason I always thought that you could apply for citizenship as long as you maintained your PR status for 3+ years. Fine, I guess that makes the decision easy enough!
Thanks for the reply. Leslie

 

[Msafiri]

Oh, I see. For some reason I always thought that you could apply for citizenship as long as you maintained your PR status for 3+ years. Fine, I guess that makes the decision easy enough!
Thanks for the reply. Leslie

To apply for Canadian Citizenship you need to be a PR with at least 3 years (1095 days) of residence in the 4 years prior to the application date. Residence is not defined as physical presence in the Citizenship Act so there are effectively 2 classes of applicants:

1. Those who have 1095 days of physical presence aka routine application - processing time of 21 months for 80% of applicants. Some are lucky and get it in as little as 8 months most seems to be around 15 month mark.

2. Those with less than 1095 days of physical presence aka non routine application - you will get a Residence Questionnaire to determine your ties/ attachment to Canada. This route is really a last option and those successful usually live in Canada but the nature of their Canadian employment is such that they have difficulty getting the 1095 days e.g. a truck driver employed by Wallmart Canada living in Canada but with weekly runs to the US for his/ her job. Non routine applications have no timeline and getting an RQ adds 18-24 months to the routine timeline. If after the RQ you need to see Citizenship Judge add another 12-18 months...it gets ugly.

The further away you are from the 1095 days the more likely you are to have both an RQ and to see a judge. Last time I checked there was an operational memo from CIC for applicants with less than 900 days to have a mandatory hearing before a judge. Increasingly the Federal Court is going with the physical presence criteria for those appealing denials of citizenship without 1095 physical days.

By the way even those claiming 1095 physical days can and do get RQd - CIC doesn't trust their declaration or its a random thing.

Your spouse is as per option 2 - I wouldn't waste the 200 dollars but its your call.

If you work for the Federal Government e.g you are in the military or a diplomat then his time would be considered as physical presence...else no dice.

Get your UK citizenship in case you decide to return to Canada to get the 1095 physical days...UKBA process routine citizenship applications at a supersonic 6 months...key reason is because in the UK:

(i) you do your test and submit results with the citizenship application - no waiting for a year for a test and no risk of missing it.

(ii) you submit proof of residence i.e. all passport pages, P60s/ Notice of Tax Assessements, DL etc with the application.

(iii) the fee is significantly higher (1,600 dollars) so better/more resources to process applications.

(iv) defined physical presence criteria - so you don't have people who are officialy eligible but practically won't get citizenship clogging up the system.

 

[lesintheuk]

Msafari - thank you for the reply, this makes sense and clears up a lot of the nuances which I was not understanding at all! It is a minefield once you start to look into it and is clearly not worth it to us at this point.

And fortunately, I already have my UK Citizenship. As you say, it seems like it was much easier and far less arduous then the Canadian process. At the time I fretted a lot about it but feels like a walk in the park compared to this (particularly the 'test' bit, where I merely had to call up my local centre and book a time which suited me to take the test, with the test results then attached to my subsequent application).